lations which he had
sought in the exercise of his intellectual strength also invaded.

While thus prematurely broken into the pains of life, a no less
darkening effect was produced upon him by too early an initiation into
its pleasures. That charm with which the fancy of youth invests an
untried world was, in his case, soon dissipated. His passions had, at
the very onset of their career, forestalled the future; and the blank
void that followed was by himself considered as one of the causes of
that melancholy, which now settled so deeply into his character.

"My passions" (he says, in his 'Detached Thoughts') "were developed very
early--so early that few would believe me if I were to state the period
and the facts which accompanied it. Perhaps this was one of the reasons
which caused the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts,--having
anticipated life. My earlier poems are the thoughts of one at least ten
years older than the age at which they were written,--I don't mean for
their solidity, but their experience. The two first Cantos of Childe
Harold were completed at twenty-two; and they are written as if by a man
older than I shall probably ever be."

Though the allusions in the first sentence of this extract have
reference to a much earlier period, they afford an opportunity of
remarking, that however dissipated may have been the life which he led
during the two or three years previous to his departure on his
travels, yet the notion caught up by many, from his own allusions, in
Childe Harold, to irregularities and orgies of which Newstead had been
the scene, is, like most other imputations against him, founded on his
own testimony, greatly exaggerated. He describes, it is well known,
the home of his poetical representative as a "monastic dome, condemned
to uses vile," and then adds,--

"Where Superstition once had made her den,
Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile."

Mr. Dallas, too, giving in to the same strain of exaggeration, says,
in speaking of the poet's preparations for his departure, "already
satiated with pleasure, and disgusted with those companions who have
no other resource, he had resolved on mastering his appetites;--he
broke up his harams." The truth, however, is, that the narrowness of
Lord Byron's means would alone have prevented such oriental luxuries.
The mode of his life at Newstead was simple and unexpensive. His
companions, though not averse to convivial indulgences, were of