he injurious effect of his obstinate fasts. "I have not left my room
these four days past," he writes in his memorandum, April, 1814, at a
moment when his heart was agitated by a passion; "but I have been
fencing with Jackson an hour a day by way of exercise, _so as to get
matter under, and give sway to the ethereal part of my nature_. The more
I fatigue myself, the better my mind is for the rest of the day; and
then my evenings acquire that calm, that prostration and languor, that
are such a happiness to me. To-day I fenced for an hour, wrote an ode to
Napoleon Bonaparte, copied it out, ate six biscuits, drank four bottles
of soda-water, read the rest of the time, and then gave a load of advice
to poor H---- about his mistress, who torments him intolerably, enough
to make him consumptive. Ah! to be sure, it suits me well to be giving
lessons to----; it is true they are thrown to the winds."[61]

This desire of giving mind dominion over matter is shown equally in all
his tastes, all his preferences. Beauty in art consisted wholly for him
in the expression of heart and soul. He had a horror of realism in art;
the Flemish school inspired him with a sort of nausea. Certain material
points of beauty in women, that are generally admired, had no beauty for
him. The music he liked, and of which he never grew tired, was not
brilliant or difficult, but simple; that which awakens the most delicate
sentiments of the soul, which brings tears to the eye.

"I have known few persons," says Moore, "more alive than he to the
charms of simple music; and I have often seen tears in his eyes when
listening to the Irish Melodies. Among those that caused him these
emotions was the one beginning--

"When first I met thee, warm and young."

The words of this melody, besides the moral sentiment they express, also
admit a political meaning. Lord Byron rejected this meaning, and
delivered his soul over, with the liveliest motion, to the more natural
sentiment conveyed in that song."

"Only the fear of seeming to affect sensibility could have restrained
my tears," he said once, on hearing Mrs. D---- sing

"Could'st thou look."

"Very often," said Mme. G----, "I have seen him with tears in his eyes
when I was playing favorite airs to him on the piano, of which he never
got tired."[62]

Stendhall also speaks of Lord Byron's emotion while listening to a piece
of music by Mayer at Milan, and says that if he lived a hundred years he
cou