loved unselfishly. Bitter remembrances, reflections arising from the
conduct of friends, made him, _it is true_, doubt the existence of
friendship, generalize, blame sometimes, and write those fine stanzas in
the fourteenth canto of "Don Juan:"--

"Without a friend, what were humanity,
To hunt our errors up with a good grace?
Consoling us with--'Would you had thought twice!
Ah! if you had but follow'd my advice!'

XLVIII.

"O Job! you had two friends: one's quite enough,
Especially when we are ill at ease;
They're but bad pilots when the weather's rough,
Doctors less famous for their cures than fees.
Let no man grumble when his friends fall off.
As they will do like leaves at the first breeze:
When your affairs come round, one way or 'tother,
Go to the coffee-house, and take another.

XLIX.

"But this is not my maxim; had it been,
Some heart-aches had been spared me: yet I care not--
I would not be a tortoise in his screen
Of stubborn shell, which waves and weather wear not;
'Tis better on the whole to have felt and seen
That which humanity may bear, or bear not;
'Twill teach discernment to the sensitive,
And not to pour their ocean in a sieve.

L.

"Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe,
Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast,
Is that portentous phrase, 'I told you so,'
Utter'd by friends, those prophets of the past,
Who, 'stead of saying what you now should do,
Own they foresaw that you would fall at last,
And solace your slight lapse 'gainst '_bonos mores_,'
With a long memorandum of old stories."

On looking into his own heart, Lord Byron no longer doubted the
existence of sincere friendships, devoid of all ironical selfishness,
since he wrote that forty-ninth stanza, where he says that such is not
his maxim, or his heart would have had less to suffer.

Did he not make love of country incarnate in that admirable type (_the
young Venetian Foscari_); too fine a type, perhaps, though historical,
to be understood by every one. And did he not, through other types,
equally prove his belief in all the noblest, most virtuous sentiments of
our soul? In fine, if he recognized littleness in man, he recognized
greatness likewise. All his writings, as well as his conduct through
life, belied continuously and broadly a few poetical expressions and
mystifications which drew down upon him, in common with other calumnies,