e dissipated his
fortune, that concerns us, since we are his heirs; but until we reproach
him with the fact, I know of no one who has a right to do so.

BYRON."

From all that has been said it will be seen that Byron's sensitive heart
was eminently adapted to family affections. Affection alone made him
happy, and his nature craved for it. He was often rather influenced by
passion than a seeker of its pleasures, and whenever he found relief in
the satisfaction of his passions, it was only because there was real
affection at the bottom,--an affection which tended to give him those
pleasures of intimacy in which he delighted.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 27: This chapter is to be published separately, at no very
distant period, by the author.--_Note of the translator._]

CHAPTER VIII.

QUALITIES OF LORD BYRON'S HEART.

Gratitude,--that honesty of the soul which is even greater than social
honesty, since it is regulated by no express law, and that most uncommon
virtue, since it proscribes selfishness,--was pre-eminently conspicuous
in Lord Byron.

To forget a kindness done, a service rendered, or a good-natured
proceeding, was for him an impossibility. The memories of his heart were
even more astonishing than those of his mind.

His affection for his nurses, for his masters, for all those who had
taken care of him when a boy, is well known; and how great was his
gratitude for all that Doctor Drury had done for him! His early poems
are full of it. His grateful affection for Drury he felt until his last
hour.

This quality was so strong in him, that it not only permitted him to
forget all past offenses, but even rendered him blind to any fresh
wrongs. It sufficed to have been kind to him once, to claim his
indulgence. The reader remembers that Jeffrey had been the most cruel of
the persecutors of his early poems, but that later he had shown more
impartiality. This act of justice appeared to Byron a generous act, and
one sufficient for him in return to forget all the harm done to him in
the past. We accordingly find in his memoranda of 1814:--

"It does honor to the editor (Jeffrey), because he once abused me: many
a man will retract praise; none but a high-spirited mind will revoke its
censure, or _can_ praise the man it has once attacked."

Yet Jeffrey, who was eminently a critic, gave fresh causes of
displeasure to Byron at a later period, and then it was that he forgot
the present on recalling the past.