oing him better service than his
brush:--

"I returned to Leghorn," says he, "hardly able to persuade myself that
this was the proud misanthrope whose character had ever appeared
shrouded in gloom and mystery. For I never remember having met with
_gentler, more attractive manners_ in my life. When I told him the idea
I had previously formed, what I had thought about him, he was extremely
amused, laughed a great deal, and said, 'Don't you find that I am like
every body else?'"

But Mr. Rogers thought him better than every body else, for he says:--

"From all I had observed, I left him under the impression that he
possessed an excellent heart, which had been _completely misunderstood_,
perhaps on account of his mobility and apparent likeness of manner.
Indeed he took a capricious pleasure in bringing out this contrast
between himself and others."

On quitting Pisa he went to Genoa, and there produced the same
impression on all who saw him until he left for Greece.

At this last stage of his life, the testimonies as to his amiable,
genial nature are so unanimous, from the time of his arrival to the day
of his death, that we can not refrain from quoting the language used by
some of those who saw him then.

"When I was presented to him," writes Mr. D---- to Colonel Stanhope, "I
was particularly struck with his _extremely graceful and affable
manners_, so opposite to what I had expected from the reputation given
him, and which painted him as _morose, gloomy_, almost _cynical_."[126]

"I took leave of him," writes Mr. Finlay, who was presented to Lord
Byron at Cephalonia, "quite enchanted, charmed to find a great man so
agreeable."[127]

Colonel Stanhope, afterward Lord Harrington, who had been sent to Greece
by the committee, and who only knew Lord Byron a few months before his
death, notwithstanding great discrepancies of idea and character, says
frankly, _that with regard to social relations, no one could ever have
been so agreeable_; that there was no pedantry or affectation about him,
but, on the contrary, that he was like a child for simplicity and
joyousness.

"In the evening all the English, who had not, like Colonel Stanhope,
turned Odyssean, assembled at his house, and till late at night enjoyed
the charm of his conversation. His character _so much differed from what
I had been induced to imagine from the relations of travellers_, that
either their reports must have been inaccurate, or his character must