of a silent nature, and made him grow
pale. Now, is not pale and silent anger of the kind that is overcome? We
know that Lord Byron's mother, while still young, suffered so cruelly
from the simultaneous loss of her fortune and a husband she adored, that
her temper became changed and embittered. She gave way to violent bursts
of passion, quite at variance with her excellent qualities of heart;
thus she loved her son, but being very jealous of his affection, a
trifle sufficed to make her launch out into reproaches and disagreeable
scenes. This disposition on her part was not calculated to inspire the
tenderness which her passionate fondness for him would otherwise have
merited. But it was his disapprobation of such scenes that taught him to
overcome in himself all outward tokens of anger, and to keep guard over
his temper. Thus he opposed to the violence displayed by his poor mother
a calm and silent demeanor that provoked her still more, it is true, but
which proved great strength of will in him. After a violent scene that
took place with her during one of his Cambridge vacations, he even
determined on leaving home.

"It was very seldom," says Moore, "that he allowed himself to be so far
provoked by her as to come out of his passivity."

And by what he himself declares in his memoranda, written at the age of
twenty-two, we see that he did not permit any external demonstration of
his temper, and that under this discipline it certainly had already
improved. "It is especially when I wish to keep silence, and when I feel
my cheeks and brow grow pale," says he, "that it becomes very difficult
for me to control myself; but the presence of a woman, though not of all
women, suffices to calm me."

To proceed with justice in any psychological study, we should never lose
sight of the particular circumstances of the subject under treatment.
Now, the circumstances amid which Lord Byron's moral and social life
first began to unfold itself were very irritating.

While yet a boy we see his heart expand to love, to tenderness, excited
by the way in which the young lady received his attentions, by the gift
she made him of her portrait, by meetings, by the encouragement her
parents afforded; for, notwithstanding the disproportion of age, they
looked favorably on a union that was equal with regard to fortune and
position. And while he was thus beguiled, this girl--whom he considered
an angel--deemed the timid youth too childish, and ent