fectionately yours," &c.

[Footnote 38: On this occasion, another of the noble poet's
peculiarities was, somewhat startlingly, introduced to my notice. When
we were on the point of setting out from his lodgings in St. James's
Street, it being then about mid-day, he said to the servant, who was
shutting the door of the vis-a-vis, "Have you put in the pistols?" and
was answered in the affirmative. It was difficult,--more especially,
taking into account the circumstances under which we had just become
acquainted,--to keep from smiling at this singular noon-day precaution.]

* * * * *

From the time of our first meeting, there seldom elapsed a day that Lord
Byron and I did not see each other; and our acquaintance ripened into
intimacy and friendship with a rapidity of which I have seldom known an
example. I was, indeed, lucky in all the circumstances that attended my
first introduction to him. In a generous nature like his, the pleasure
of repairing an injustice would naturally give a zest to any partiality
I might have inspired in his mind; while the manner in which I had
sought this reparation, free as it was from resentment or defiance, left
nothing painful to remember in the transaction between us,--no
compromise or concession that could wound self-love, or take away from
the grace of that frank friendship to which he at once, so cordially and
so unhesitatingly, admitted me. I was also not a little fortunate in
forming my acquaintance with him, before his success had yet reached its
meridian burst,--before the triumphs that were in store for him had
brought the world all in homage at his feet, and, among the splendid
crowds that courted his society, even claims less humble than mine had
but a feeble chance of fixing his regard. As it was, the new scene of
life that opened upon him with his success, instead of detaching us from
each other, only multiplied our opportunities of meeting, and increased
our intimacy. In that society where his birth entitled him to move,
circumstances had already placed me, notwithstanding mine; and when,
after the appearance of "Childe Harold," he began to mingle with the
world, the same persons, who had long been _my_ intimates and friends,
became his; our visits were mostly to the same places, and, in the gay
and giddy round of a London spring, we were generally (as in one of his
own letters he expresses it) "embarked in the same Ship of Fools
together."