with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star."

There never was a time when Byron did not seek out beautiful retreats in
Nature as the source of his highest happiness. Hence, solitude was
nothing to him when he could commune with the works of God. His
biographer declares that in 1821 "he was greatly improved in every
respect,--in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness.
He has had mischievous passions, but these he seems to have subdued." He
was always temperate in his diet, living chiefly on fish and vegetables;
and if he drank more wine and spirits than was good for him, it was to
rally his exhausted energies. His powers of production were never
greater than at this period, but his literary labors were slowly wearing
him out. He could not live without work, while pleasure palled upon him.
In a letter to a stranger who sought to convert him, he showed anything
but anger or contempt. "Do me," says he, "the justice to suppose, that
_Video meliora proboque_, however the _deteriora sequor_ may have been
applied to my conduct." Writing to Murray in 1822, he says: "It is not
impossible that I may have three or four cantos of 'Don Juan' ready by
autumn, as I obtained a permission from my dictatress [the Countess
Guiccioli] to continue it,--provided always it was to be more guarded
and decorous in the continuation than in the commencement." Alas, he
could not undo the mischief he had done!

About this time Byron received a visit from Lord Clare, his earliest
friend at Cambridge, to whom through life he was devotedly attached,--a
friendship which afforded exceeding delight. He never forgot his few
friends, although he railed at his enemies. He was ungenerously treated
by Leigh Hunt, to whom he rendered every kindness. He says,--

"I have done all I could for him since he came here [Genoa], but it is
all most useless. His wife is ill, his six children far from tractable,
and in worldly affairs he himself is a child. The death of Shelley left
them totally aground; and I could not see them in such a state without
using the common feelings of humanity, and what means were in my power,
to set them afloat again.... As to any community of feeling, thought, or
opinion between him and me there is little or none; but I think him a
good-principled man, and must do as I would be done by."