"There are some persons of a sensibility
so powerful, that whoever happens to be with them is, at that moment,
to them the world: their hearts involuntarily open; they are prompted
by a strong desire to please; and they thus make confidants of their
sentiments people whom they in reality regard with indifference."]

A most apt illustration of this point of his character is to be found
in an anecdote told of him by Parry, who, though himself the victim,
had the sense and good temper to perceive the source to which Byron's
conduct was to be traced. While the Turkish fleet was blockading
Missolonghi, his Lordship, one day, attended by Parry, proceeded in a
small punt, rowed by a boy, to the mouth of the harbour, while in a
large boat accompanying them were Prince Mavrocordato and his
attendants. In this situation, an indignant feeling of contempt and
impatience at the supineness of their Greek friends seized the
engineer, and he proceeded to vent this feeling to Lord Byron in no
very measured terms, pronouncing Prince Mavrocordato to be "an old
gentlewoman," and concluding, according to his own statement, with
the following words:--"If I were in their place, I should be in a
fever at the thought of my own incapacity and ignorance, and should
burn with impatience to attempt the destruction of those rascal
Turks. But the Greeks and the Turks are opponents worthy, by their
imbecility, of each other."

"I had scarcely explained myself fully," adds Mr. Parry, "when his
Lordship ordered our boat to be placed alongside the other, and
actually related our whole conversation to the Prince. In doing it,
however, he took on himself the task of pacifying both the Prince and
me, and though I was at first very angry, and the Prince, I believe,
very much annoyed, he succeeded. Mavrocordato afterwards showed no
dissatisfaction with me, and I prized Lord Byron's regard too much,
to remain long displeased with a proceeding which was only an
unpleasant manner of reproving us both."

Into these and other such branches from the main course of his
character, it might have been a task of some interest to
investigate,--certain as we should be that, even in the remotest and
narrowest of these windings, some of the brightness and strength of
the original current would be perceptible. Enough however has been,
perhaps, said to set other minds upon supplying what remains:--if the
track of analysis here opened be the true one, to follow it in its
f