is subsequent life and writings, track visibly the deep vein of
melancholy which nature had imbedded in his character.

Such was the state of mind and heart,--as, from his own testimony and
that of others, I have collected it,--in which Lord Byron now set out
on his indefinite pilgrimage; and never was there a change wrought in
disposition and character to which Shakspeare's fancy of "sweet bells
jangled out of tune" more truly applied. The unwillingness of Lord
Carlisle to countenance him, and his humiliating position in
consequence, completed the full measure of that mortification towards
which so many other causes had concurred. Baffled, as he had been, in
his own ardent pursuit of affection and friendship, his sole revenge
and consolation lay in doubting that any such feelings really existed.
The various crosses he had met with, in themselves sufficiently
irritating and wounding, were rendered still more so by the high,
impatient temper with which he encountered them. What others would
have bowed to, as misfortunes, his proud spirit rose against, as
wrongs; and the vehemence of this re-action produced, at once, a
revolution throughout his whole character,[114] in which, as in
revolutions of the political world, all that was bad and irregular in
his nature burst forth with all that was most energetic and grand. The
very virtues and excellencies of his disposition ministered to the
violence of this change. The same ardour that had burned through his
friendships and loves now fed the fierce explosions of his
indignation and scorn. His natural vivacity and humour but lent a
fresher flow to his bitterness,[115] till he, at last, revelled in it
as an indulgence; and that hatred of hypocrisy, which had hitherto
only shown itself in a too shadowy colouring of his own youthful
frailties, now hurried him, from his horror of all false pretensions
to virtue, into the still more dangerous boast and ostentation of
vice.

The following letter to his mother, written a few days before he
sailed, gives some particulars respecting the persons who composed his
suit. Robert Rushton, whom he mentions so feelingly in the postscript,
was the boy introduced, as his page, in the first Canto of Childe
Harold.

LETTER 34.

TO MRS. BYRON.

"Falmouth, June 22. 1809.

"Dear Mother,

"I am about to sail in a few days; probably before this reaches you.
Fletcher begged so hard, that I have continued him in my service. If
he does not b