se, he showed strength of mind, and that his senses were under
the dominion of reason; for, unable to secure her happiness or his own,
he sought a remedy in flight.

When writing "Childe Harold," however, about this period, an evil genius
suggested expressions, that if taken seriously and in their literal
sense, might some day furnish the weapons of accusation to his enemies.
For, while acting thus toward Florence, he introduced the episode into
"Childe Harold" in a way that looks calumnious against himself:----

"Little knew she that seeming marble heart,
Now mask'd in silence or withheld by pride,
Was not unskillful in the spoiler's art,
And spreads its snares licentious far and wide;
Nor from the base pursuit had turn'd aside,
As long as aught was worthy to pursue."

"We have here," says Moore, "another instance of his propensity to
self-misrepresentation. However great might have been the irregularities
of his college life, such phrases as the 'art of the spoiler' and
'spreading snares' were in no-wise applicable to them."[44]

Galt expresses the same certainty on this head. "Notwithstanding," says
he, "the unnecessary exposure he makes of his dissipation on his first
entrance into society (in the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold'), it
is proved beyond _all dispute_, that at no period of his existence did
Lord Byron _lead an irregular life_. That on one or two occasions he
fell into some excesses, may be true; _but his habits were never those
of a libertine_."[45]

And after saying that the declaration by which Byron himself
acknowledges his antipathy to vice carries more weight than all the
rest, and that what he says of it is vague and metaphysical, he
adds:--"But that only further corroborates my impression concerning
him,--that is to say, that he took a sort of vanity in setting forth his
experience in dissipation, but _that this dissipation never became a
habit with him_."

His true sentiments at this time are well portrayed in his letters, and
especially in those addressed to his mother from Athens, when she
consulted him on the conduct to be observed toward one of his tenants, a
young farmer, who had behaved ill to a girl. "My opinion is," answered
he, "that Mr. B---- ought to marry Miss K----. _Our first duty is not to
do evil_ (but, alas! that is not possible); our second duty _is to
remedy it, if that be in our power_. The girl is his equal. If she were
inferior to him, a sum of