h one walked and rode alternately. When they reached the
bridge, at a point where the river becomes sombre and romantic, Byron,
who was on foot, recollected a legendary prophecy, which says:--

"Brig o' Balgounie, black's your wa':
Wi' a wife's ae son and a mare's ae foal
Doun ye shall fa'!"

Little Byron stopped his companion, asked him if he remembered the
prediction, and declared that as the pony might very well be "a mare's
ae foal," he intended to cross first, for although both only sons, his
mother alone would mourn him, while the death of his friend, whose
father and mother were both alive, would cause a twofold grief.[34]

As a stripling, he saw at Southwell a poor woman sally mournfully from a
shop, because the Bible she wished to purchase costs more money than she
possesses. Byron hastens to buy it, and, full of joy, runs after the
poor creature to give it to her. As a young man, at an age when the
effervescence and giddiness of youth forget many things, he never forgot
that to seduce a young girl is a crime. Then, as ever, he was less the
seducer than the seduced.

Moore tells us that Byron was so keenly sensitive to the pleasure or
pain of those with whom he lived, that while in his imaginary realms he
defied the universe, in real life a frown or a smile could overcome him.

Proud, energetic, independent, intrepid, benevolence alone rendered Lord
Byron so flexible, patient, and docile to the remonstrances or
reproaches of those who loved him, and to whom he allowed friendly
motives, that he often sacrificed his own talent to this genial and
kindly sentiment. The Rev. Mr. Beecher, disapproving as too free one of
the poems he had just published at the age of seventeen, in his first
edition of the "Hours of Idleness," Lord Byron _withdrew_ and _burnt_
the whole edition. At the solicitation of Dallas and Gifford he
suppresses, in the second canto of "Childe Harold," the very stanzas he
preferred to all the rest. Madame G----, grieved at the persecution
drawn down on him by the first canto of "Don Juan," begs him to
discontinue the poem, and he ceased to write it.

At the request of Madame de Stael, he consented, in spite of his great
disinclination, to attempt a reconciliation with Lady Byron.

The "Curse of Minerva," a poem written in Greece, while he was still
painfully impressed by the artistic piracies of Lord Elgin in the
"Parthenon," was in the press and on the eve of publication; but Lord
El