the real and imaginary personage was such as to cause the greatest
astonishment to all those who, having hitherto adopted the received
notions about him, at last came to know him at Ravenna, at Pisa, at
Genoa, and in Greece, up to the very last days of his life. But, before
quoting some of these fortunate travellers, I must transcribe a few more
passages from Moore:

"On my rejoining him in town this spring, I found the enthusiasm about
his writings and himself, which I had left so prevalent, both in the
world of literature and society, grown, if any thing, still more genuine
and intense. In the immediate circle perhaps around him, familiarity of
intercourse must have begun to produce its usual disenchanting effect."

"His own liveliness and unreserve, on a more intimate acquaintance,
would not be long in dispelling that charm of poetic sadness, which to
the eyes of distant observers hung about him; while the romantic
notions, connected by some of his fair readers with those past and
nameless loves alluded to in his poems, ran some risk of abatement from
too near an acquaintance with the supposed objects of his fancy and
fondness at present."

"But, whatever of its first romantic impression the personal character
of the poet may, from such causes, have lost in the circle he most
frequented, this disappointment of the imagination was far more than
compensated by the frank, social, and engaging qualities, both of
disposition and manner, which, on a nearer intercourse, he disclosed, as
well as by that entire absence of any literary assumption or pedantry,
which entitled him fully to the praise bestowed by Sprat upon
Cowley--that few could ever discover he was a great poet by his
discourse."

While thus by his friends, he was seen in his true colors, in his
weakness and in his strength, to strangers, and such as were out of this
immediate circle, the sternness of his imaginary personages were, by the
greater number of them, supposed to belong, not only as regarded mind,
but manners, to himself. So prevalent and persevering has been this
notion, that, in some disquisitions on his character published since his
death, and containing otherwise many just and striking views, we find,
in the portrait drawn of him, such features as the following:--"Lord
Byron had a stern, direct, severe mind: a sarcastic, disdainful, gloomy
temper. He had no sympathy with a flippant cheerfulness: upon the
surface was sourness, discontent, disp