en; but he considered this an excessive indulgence. "I have made a
regular dinner for the first time since Sunday," he writes in his
journal. "Every other day tea and six dry biscuits. This dinner makes
me heavy, stupid, gives me horrible dreams (nevertheless, it only
consisted of a pint of Bucellas and fish; I do not touch meat, and take
but little vegetable). I wish I were in the country for exercise,
instead of refreshing myself with abstinence. _I am not afraid of a
slight addition of flesh; my bones can well support that! but the worst
of it is, that the devil arrives with plumpness, and I must drive him
away through hunger!_ I DO NOT WISH TO BE THE SLAVE OF MY APPETITE. If I
fall, my heart at least shall herald the race."[60]

Except the last phrase, which is more worldly or more human, might not
one fancy one's self listening to the confession or soliloquy of some
Christian philosopher of the fourth century: one of those who sought the
Theban deserts to measure their strength of soul and body in desperate
struggles with Nature; the confession of a Hilarion or a Jerome, rather
than that of a young man of twenty-three, brought up amid the
conveniences and luxuries surrounding the aristocracy of the most
aristocratic country in the world, where material comfort is best
appreciated?

Thus it was, nevertheless, that Lord Byron practiced epicureanism with
regard to his food, making very rare exceptions when he consented to
dine out.

If time, change of circumstances, and climate, caused some slight
modifications in his manner of living, his mode of life did not vary. At
Venice, Ravenna, and Genoa, this epicurean would never suffer meat on
his table; and he only made some rare exceptions, to avoid too much
singularity, at Pisa, where he invited some friends to dinner. Count
Gamba, after having spoken of the sobriety of his regimen on board the
vessel that took him to Greece, the Ionian Islands, and finally to
Missolonghi, says, "He ate nothing but vegetables and fish, and drank
only water. Our fear was," says he, "lest this excessive abstinence
should be injurious to his health!"

Alas! we know that it was. It is certain that this debilitating regime,
joined to such strong moral impressions, too strongly felt, undermined
Lord Byron's fine constitution, which had only resisted so long through
its extreme vigor and the rare purity of his blood.

The bodily exercise he took had the same object, and further added to
t