ctify, and his, being so rich, they
_perished_, after a short period of wretched existence. All these
influences, and this precocious experience, were for him at this time a
sort of personification of Mephistopheles, although not entailing
serious consequences; for in the main his belief was not deeply shaken.
It had no other effect than to throw him, for a time, into uncertainty
on points necessary to him, "and to teach him," says Moore, "to feel
less embarrassed in a _sort_ of skepticism."

This disagreement between his reason and his aspirations becoming deeper
and wider, his mind ceased always to follow his heart. But the latter
following rather the former, though with sadness and fatigue, and all
the problems of life becoming more and more enveloped in darkness, it is
possible that he passed through gloomy hours, wherein equivocal
expressions escaped his pen. In a word, if he avoided dizziness, he was
not equally fortunate with regard to ennui.

"Ennui," says the clever Viscomte D'Yzarn de Freissinet, in his deep and
delightful book, "_Les Pensees grises_," "ennui is felt by ordinary
minds because they can not understand earth, and by superior ones
because they can not understand heaven."

Let us now observe Byron after he had taken his degrees at the
university, and when about to enter into possession of his estates. On
seeing this young nobleman of twenty, almost an orphan, commence his
career perfectly independent, call around him at Newstead Abbey his dear
companions of Harrow and Cambridge, make up masquerades with them, don
the costume of abbots and monks, pass the nights in running about his
own parks and the heather of Sherwood Forest, and the days amid youthful
eccentricities, amiable hospitality, and London dissipation, it would
seem as if this odd, shifting, noisy kind of life, however efficient for
developing knowledge of men and things, must inevitably obliterate all
trace of melancholy.

But it was not so; the responsibilities of life began too soon for him,
and the joyous horizon of his twentieth year was already dotted with
black marks indicative of the approaching tempest. In the first place,
the cassock of a real priest never reposed on a heart more sensitive,
endowed with feelings deeper and less hostile to audacity of mind.
Moreover, the griefs of his boyhood had sown seeds of sadness in his
heart, and the unjust cruel criticism lavished on his early poems had
already inflicted a deep wound.