circumstances. Thus his melancholy, being fictitious, remained generally
subject in real life to his fine natural temperament, only gaining the
mastery when he was under the influence of inspiration, and with pen in
hand.

"All is strange," says La Bruyere, "in the humor, morals, and manners of
most men.... The wants of this life, the situation in which we are,
necessity's law, force _nature, and cause great changes in it_. Thus
such men can not be defined, thoroughly and in themselves; too many
external things affect, change, and overwhelm them; they are not
precisely what they are, or rather, what they appear to be."

Thus, then, having a natural disposition for gayety received from God,
and which I shall call _interior_, which always had the upper hand in
all important actions of his life, but which was only truly known by
those who approached him closely, I conclude that gayety often
predominated, and ought to have predominated much more, in Lord Byron's
life.

But through the fictitious character, which I will call _exterior_,
derived from _education, from circumstances of family, country, and
association_, which (apparently) modified the first, and gave the world
sometimes a reason, and sometimes a pretext for inventing that dark myth
called by his name, _and which really only influenced his writings_,
melancholy often predominated in his life. However, its sway was less in
reality than in the imagination of those who wished to identify the man
with the poet, and to find the real Lord Byron in the heroes of his
early poems.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 161: See the Introduction.]

[Footnote 162: See chapter on "Generosity."]

[Footnote 163: See chapter on "Friendships."]

[Footnote 164: Ibid.]

[Footnote 165: See chapter on "Love of Fame."]

[Footnote 166: Dallas, vol. ii.]

[Footnote 167: Moore, vol. i.]

[Footnote 168: See Moore, 35th and 36th letters.]

[Footnote 169: See "Childe Harold."]

[Footnote 170: See Introduction.]

[Footnote 171: "His lordship was in better spirits when I had met with
some adventure, and he chuckled with an inward sense of enjoyment, not
altogether without spleen, a kind of malicious satisfaction, as his
companions recounted, with all becoming gravity, their woes and
sufferings as an apology for begging a bed and a morsel for the night.
God forgive! but I partook of Byron's levity at the idea of personages
so consequential wandering destitute in the streets, seeking for