t then he was in love, and
that is a martial passion."

However disagreeable it was to find the consequences of his Satire thus
rising up against him in a hostile shape, he was far more embarrassed in
those cases where the retribution took a friendly form. Being now daily
in the habit of meeting and receiving kindnesses from persons who,
either in themselves, or through their relatives, had been wounded by
his pen, he felt every fresh instance of courtesy from such quarters to
be, (as he sometimes, in the strong language of Scripture, expressed
it,) like "heaping coals of fire upon his head." He was, indeed, in a
remarkable degree, sensitive to the kindness or displeasure of those he
lived with; and had he passed a life subject to the immediate influence
of society, it may be doubted whether he ever would have ventured upon
those unbridled bursts of energy in which he at once demonstrated and
abused his power. At the period when he ran riot in his Satire, society
had not yet caught him within its pale; and in the time of his Cains and
Don Juans, he had again broken loose from it. Hence, his instinct
towards a life of solitude and independence, as the true element of his
strength. In his own domain of imagination he could defy the whole
world; while, in real life, a frown or smile could rule him. The
facility with which he sacrificed his first volume, at the mere
suggestion of his friend, Mr. Becher, is a strong proof of this
pliableness; and in the instance of Childe Harold, such influence had
the opinions of Mr. Gifford and Mr. Dallas on his mind, that he not only
shrunk from his original design of identifying himself with his hero,
but surrendered to them one of his most favourite stanzas, whose
heterodoxy they had objected to; nor is it too much, perhaps, to
conclude, that had a more extended force of such influence then acted
upon him, he would have consented to omit the sceptical parts of his
poem altogether. Certain it is that, during the remainder of his stay in
England, no such doctrines were ever again obtruded on his readers; and
in all those beautiful creations of his fancy, with which he brightened
that whole period, keeping the public eye in one prolonged gaze of
admiration, both the bitterness and the licence of his impetuous spirit
were kept effectually under control. The world, indeed, had yet to
witness what he was capable of, when emancipated from this restraint.
For, graceful and powerful as were his