d; I sent the _pate_ to my friend H----,
because I felt another dinner off it would play the deuce with me; and so
you see, after all, he owed the _pate_ more to selfishness than
generosity." Seeing us smile at this, he said:--"When you know me better,
you will find that I am the most selfish person in the world; I have,
however, the merit, if it be one, of not only being perfectly conscious of
my faults, but of never denying them; and this surely is something, in
this age of cant and hypocrisy."

In all his conversations relative to Lady Byron, and they are frequent, he
declares that he is totally unconscious of the cause of her leaving him,
but suspects that the illnatured interposition of Mrs. Charlemont led to
it. It is a strange business! He declares that he left no means untried to
effect a reconciliation, and always adds with bitterness, "A day will
arrive when I shall be avenged. I feel that I shall not live long, and
when the grave has closed over me, what must she feel?" All who wish well
to Lady Byron must desire that she should not survive her husband, for the
all-atoning grave that gives oblivion to the errors of the dead, clothes
those of the living in such sombre colours to their own too-late awakened
feelings, as to render them wretched for life, and more than avenges the
real, or imagined wrongs of those we have lost for ever.

When Lord Byron was praising the mental and personal qualifications of
Lady Byron, I asked him how all that he now said agreed with certain
sarcasms supposed to bear a reference to her, in his works. He smiled,
shook his head, and said they were meant to spite and vex her, when he was
wounded and irritated at her refusing to receive or answer his letters;
that he was not sincere in his implied censures, and that he was sorry he
had written them; but notwithstanding this regret, and all his good
resolutions to avoid similar sins, he might on renewed provocation recur
to the same vengeance, though he allowed it was petty and unworthy of him.
Lord Byron speaks of his sister, Mrs. Leigh, constantly, and always with
strong expressions of affection; he says she is the most faultless person
he ever knew, and that she was his only source of consolation in his
troubles on the separation.

Byron is a great talker, his flippancy ceases in a _tete-a-tete_, and he
becomes sententious, abandoning himself to the subject and seeming to
think aloud, though his language has the appearance of stif