were wont to run after Lord Byron, intruding on his
private walks, and even pressing into his very palace. Such conduct, of
course, displeased him, and accordingly in the summer of 1818 we find
traces of ill-humor visible in his correspondence, and even in the first
two cantos of "Don Juan." Afterward, when he had been laid hold of and
absorbed by a great passion, his irritation merged into sadness,
melancholy, disquietude, and irresolution.[184]

But if all this proves that sadness wearing the garb of melancholy
sometimes approached him, even at Venice; we see too clearly its real
and accidental causes to be able to ascribe it to a permanent and fatal
disposition of temperament.

Many signs of suffering escaped his pen at this time. For instance,
writing to Moore from Venice in 1818, and wishing to give him a
picturesque description of a creature full of savage energy, who forced
herself upon him in a thousand extravagant ways, refusing to leave his
house, he said:--

"I like this kind of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred
Medea to any woman that ever breathed. You may, perhaps, wonder at my
speaking thus (making allusion to Lady Byron).... I could have forgiven
the dagger or the bowl, any thing but the _deliberate desolation_ piled
upon me when I stood _alone upon my hearth_ with my household gods
shivered around me.... Do you suppose I have forgotten or forgiven it?
It has comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I shall
remain only a spectator upon this earth until some great occasion
presents itself, which may come yet. There are others more to be blamed
than----, and it is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly."

Meanwhile, until Providence should present him with this opportunity,
another feeling took involuntary possession of his whole soul. But would
not the sentiment which was about to swallow up or transform all others,
and which was at last to bring him some happiness, also destroy the
peace so carefully preserved in his heart by indifference since he left
London? He seemed at first to have dreaded such a result himself; for,
in one of the earliest letters addressed to the person beloved (letters
which fully unveil his beautiful soul, and where one would vainly seek
an indelicate or sensual expression), he tells her "that he had
resolved, on system, to avoid a great passion," but that she had put to
flight all his resolutions, that he is wholly hers, and will become a