e insipidity."

The task of publishing "Childe Harold" was left to Dallas, and the
certainty of its success found him pretty nearly indifferent. When his
heart was in pain, Lord Byron's self-love always lay dormant. But
destiny was still far from granting him any respite. Eddlestone, that
dear friend, on whose true affection he most relied, as well as another
beloved one, whose name ever remained locked within his breast, both
died about this time; so that, as he says in his preface, during the
short space of two months, he lost six persons most dear. In announcing
this new misfortune to Dallas, he expresses himself in the following
words:--

"I have almost forgot the taste of grief; _and supped full of horrors_,
till I have become callous; nor have I a tear left for an event which,
five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems to
me as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of
age. My friends fall round me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before
I am withered.

"Other men can always take refuge in their families; I have no resource
but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter,
except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am, indeed,
very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not
apt to cant of sensibility."

But if tears no longer flowed from his eyes, they did from his pen; for
it was then he wrote his elegies to "Thyrza," whose pathetic sublimity
is so well characterized by Moore; and that he added those melancholy
stanzas in "Childe Harold" on the death of friends, which we find at the
end of the second canto.

"Indeed," he wrote again to Hodgson, "I am growing nervous, ridiculously
nervous, I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else.
My days are listless, and my nights restless. I have very seldom any
society, and when I have, I run out of it. At this present writing,
there are in the next room three ladies, and I have stolen away to
write this grumbling letter. I don't know that I sha'n't end with
insanity, for I find a want of method in arranging my thoughts that
perplexes me strangely; but this looks more like silliness than madness,
as Scroope Davies would facetiously remark in his consoling manner. I
must try the hartshorn of your company; and a session of Parliament
would suit me well, any thing to cure me of conjugating the accursed
verb _ennuyer_."

Distractions did come to