ood
said on this subject. We have observed his sympathy for the old
cup-bearer of his family mansion; the pleasantries expended on the quack
Lavander, who was always promising to cure his foot, and never did; the
jesting tone of his boyish correspondence; afterward the masqueradings
that took place at Newstead Abbey; then again his gay doings with Moore
and Rogers in London; the jests pervading the correspondence of his
maturer years; then their concentration in "Beppo" and "Don Juan;" and
finally, how often, even in Greece, when he was already unwell at
Missolonghi, he could not help giving way to pleasantry and childish
play to such a degree that good Dr. Kennedy, when he wished to convert
him to his somewhat intolerant orthodoxy at Cephalonia, found one of the
obstacles to consist in the difficulty of keeping Lord Byron serious.

"He was fond," says the doctor, "of saying smart and witty things, and
never allowed an opportunity of punning to escape him.... He generally
showed high spirits and hilarity.... I have heard him say several witty
things; but as I was always anxious to keep him grave and present
important subjects for his consideration, after allowing the laugh to
pass I again endeavored to resume the seriousness of the conversation,
while his lordship constantly did the same."

And then Kennedy adds:--"My impression from them was, that they were
unworthy a man of his accomplishments: I mean the desire of
jesting."[150]

These words well characterize the honest Methodist, who, like many other
good and noble minds, yet could not understand fun. This incapability is
also sometimes the case with persons of a sour, ill-natured, or
susceptible disposition, whose excessive vanity is shocked at all
simple, innocent explosions of gayety and pleasantry.[151] Colonel
Stanhope, who knew Lord Byron at the same period, and who was not a
Methodist, but who from other causes could not appreciate the poet's
vivacious wit, said:--

"The mind of Lord Byron was like a volcano, full of fire and wrath,
sometimes calm, often dazzling and playful.... As a companion," he adds,
"no one could be more amusing than Lord Byron; he had neither pedantry
nor affectation about him, but was natural and playful as a boy. His
conversation resembled a stream; sometimes smooth, sometimes rapid, and
sometimes rushing down in cataracts. It was a mixture of philosophy and
slang, of every thing,--like his 'Don Juan.' He was a patient, and in
ge