be out soon. _March_, sir, _March_ is the month
for the _trade_, and they must be considered. You have written a
very noble Poem, and nothing but the detestable taste of the day
can do you harm,--but I think you will beat it. Your measure is
uncommonly well chosen and wielded."[116]

[Footnote 115: When these monthly disbursements had amounted to 70_l._,
Ashe wrote to beg that the whole remaining sum of 80_l_. might be
advanced to him at one payment, in order to enable him, as he said, to
avail himself of a passage to New South Wales, which had been again
offered to him. The sum was accordingly, by Lord Byron's orders, paid
into his hands.]

[Footnote 116: This letter is but a fragment,--the remainder being
lost.]

* * * * *

In the extracts from his Journal, just given, there is a passage that
cannot fail to have been remarked, where, in speaking of his admiration
of some lady, whose name he has himself left blank, the noble writer
says--"a wife would be the salvation of me." It was under this
conviction, which not only himself but some of his friends entertained,
of the prudence of his taking timely refuge in matrimony from those
perplexities which form the sequel of all less regular ties, that he had
been induced, about a year before, to turn his thoughts seriously to
marriage,--at least, as seriously as his thoughts were ever capable of
being so turned,--and chiefly, I believe, by the advice and intervention
of his friend Lady Melbourne, to become a suitor for the hand of a
relative of that lady, Miss Milbanke. Though his proposal was not then
accepted, every assurance of friendship and regard accompanied the
refusal; a wish was even expressed that they should continue to write to
each other, and a correspondence, in consequence,--somewhat singular
between two young persons of different sexes, inasmuch as love was not
the subject of it,--ensued between them. We have seen how highly Lord
Byron estimated as well the virtues as the accomplishments of the young
lady; but it is evident that on neither side, at this period, was love
either felt or professed.[117]

In the mean time, new entanglements, in which his heart was the willing
dupe of his fancy and vanity, came to engross the young poet: and still,
as the usual penalties of such pursuits followed, he again found himself
sighing for the sober yoke of wedlock, as some security against their
recurrence. There