to him, I had more particularly in recollection a fancy
of this kind respecting myself, which he had, not long before my present
visit to him at Venice, taken into his head. In a ludicrous, and now,
perhaps, forgotten publication of mine, giving an account of the
adventures of an English family in Paris, there had occurred the
following description of the chief hero of the tale:--

"A fine, sallow, sublime sort of Werter-faced man,
With mustachios which gave (what we read of so oft)
The dear Corsair expression, half savage, half soft,--
As hyaenas in love may be fancied to look, or
A something between Abelard and old Blucher."

On seeing this doggrel, my noble friend,--as I might, indeed, with a
little more thought, have anticipated,--conceived the notion that I
meant to throw ridicule on his whole race of poetic heroes, and
accordingly, as I learned from persons then in frequent intercourse with
him, flew out into one of his fits of half humorous rage against me.
This he now confessed himself, and, in laughing over the circumstance
with me, owned that he had even gone so far as, in his first moments of
wrath, to contemplate some little retaliation for this perfidious hit at
his heroes. "But when I recollected," said he, "what pleasure it would
give the whole tribe of blockheads and blues to see you and me turning
out against each other, I gave up the idea." He was, indeed, a striking
instance of what may be almost invariably observed, that they who best
know how to wield the weapon of ridicule themselves, are the most alive
to its power in the hands of others. I remember, one day,--in the year
1813, I think,--as we were conversing together about critics and their
influence on the public. "For my part," he exclaimed, "I don't care what
they say of me, so they don't quiz me."--"Oh, you need not fear
that,"--I answered, with something, perhaps, of a half suppressed smile
on my features,--"nobody could quiz _you_"--"_You could_, you villain!"
he replied, clenching his hand at me, and looking, at the same time,
with comic earnestness into my face.

Before I proceed any farther with my own recollections, I shall here
take the opportunity of extracting some curious particulars respecting
the habits and mode of life of my friend while at Venice, from an
account obligingly furnished me by a gentleman who long resided in that
city, and who, during the greater part of Lord Byron's stay, lived on
terms of t