the necessity of any
proceeding.

Knowing how deeply this affair agitated him at that time, I was not
surprised at the sequestration in which he held himself--and which
made those who were not acquainted with his shy and mystical nature,
apply to him the description of his own Lara:

The chief of Lara is return'd again,

And why had Lara cross'd the bounding main?--
Left by his sire too young such loss to know,
Lord of himself; that heritage of woe.
In him, inexplicably mix'd, appear'd
Much to be loved and hated, sought and fear'd,
Opinion varying o'er his hidden lot,
In praise or railing ne'er his name forgot.
His silence form'd a theme for others' prate;
They guess'd, they gazed, they fain would know his fate,
What had he been? what was he, thus unknown,
Who walk'd their world, his lineage only known?
A hater of his kind? yet some would say,
With them he could seem gay amid the gay;
But own'd that smile, if oft observed and near
Waned in its mirth and wither'd to a sneer;
That smile might reach his lip, but pass'd not by;
None e'er could trace its laughter to his eye:
Yet there was softness, too, in his regard,
At times a heart is not by nature hard.
But once perceived, his spirit seem'd to hide
Such weakness as unworthy of its pride,
And stretch'd itself as scorning to redeem
One doubt from others' half-withheld esteem;
In self-inflicted penance of a breast
Which tenderness might once have wrung from rest,
In vigilance of grief that would compel
The soul to hate for having loved too well.
There was in him a vital scorn of all,
As if the worst had fall'n which could befall.
He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurl'd;
A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped
By choice the perils he by chance escaped.

Such was Byron to common observance on his return. I recollect one
night meeting him at the Opera. Seeing me with a gentleman whom he
did not know, and to whom he was unknown, he addressed me in Italian,
and we continued to converse for some time in that language. My
friend, who in the meanwhile had been observing him with curiosity,
conceiving him to be a foreigner, inquired in the course of the
evening who he was, remarking that he had never seen a man with such
a Cain-like mark on the forehead before, alluding to that singular
scowl which struck me so forcibly when I first saw him, and which
appears to have made a stronger impression upon me than it did upon