point very
strongly that he was not, de facto, even so bad as many of his
associates; and we agree with him. Byron's physical organisation was
originally as fine and sensitive as that of the most delicate woman. He
possessed the faculty of moral ideality in a high degree; and he had not,
in the earlier part of his life, an attraction towards mere brutal vice.
His physical sensitiveness was so remarkable that he says of himself, 'A
dose of salts has the effect of a temporary inebriation, like light
champagne, upon me.' Yet this exceptionally delicately-organised boy and
youth was in a circle where not to conform to the coarse drinking-customs
of his day was to incur censure and ridicule. That he early acquired the
power of bearing large quantities of liquor is manifested by the record
in his Journal, that, on the day when he read the severe 'Edinburgh'
article upon his schoolboy poems, he drank three bottles of claret at a
sitting.

Yet Byron was so far superior to his times, that some vague impulses to
physiological prudence seem to have suggested themselves to him, and been
acted upon with great vigour. He never could have lived so long as he
did, under the exhaustive process of every kind of excess, if he had not
re-enforced his physical nature by an assiduous care of his muscular
system. He took boxing-lessons, and distinguished himself in all
athletic exercises.

He also had periods in which he seemed to try vaguely to retrieve himself
from dissipation, and to acquire self-mastery by what he called
temperance.

But, ignorant and excessive in all his movements, his very efforts at
temperance were intemperate. From violent excesses in eating and
drinking, he would pass to no less unnatural periods of utter abstinence.
Thus the very conservative power which Nature has of adapting herself to
any settled course was lost. The extreme sensitiveness produced by long
periods of utter abstinence made the succeeding debauch more maddening
and fatal. He was like a fine musical instrument, whose strings were
every day alternating between extreme tension and perfect laxity. We
have in his Journal many passages, of which the following is a specimen:--

'I have dined regularly to-day, for the first time since Sunday last;
this being Sabbath too,--all the rest, tea and dry biscuits, six per
diem. I wish to God I had not dined, now! It kills me with
heaviness, stupor, and horrible dreams; and yet it was b