VIES,--Some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a
corpse in this house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What
can I say, or think, or do? My dear Scroope, if you can spare a moment,
do come down to me; I want a friend. Matthews's last letter was written
on Friday; on Saturday he was not. In ability who was like Matthews?
Come to me; I am almost desolate; left almost alone in the world. I had
but you and H---- and M----, and let me enjoy the survivors while I
can."

Writing to Dallas on the first of August, he says:--

"Besides her who gave me being, I have lost more than one who made that
being tolerable. Matthews, a man of the first talents, has perished
miserably in the muddy waves of the Cam; my poor school-fellow
Wingfield, at Coimbra, within a month: and while I had heard from all
three, but not seen one. But let this pass; we shall all one day pass
along with the rest; the world is too full of such things, and our very
sorrow is selfish."

To Hodgson he writes:--

"Indeed, the blows followed each other so rapidly, that I am yet stupid
from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh
at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake, did not
every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary.

"You will write to me? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome
before."

Some months later he heard of the death of his friend Eddleston, of
which he wrote to Dallas in the following terms:

"I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to
me in happier times. But 'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and
'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear
left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head
to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the
greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a
lonely tree before I am withered."

On that same day, 11th of October, when his mind was a prey to such
grief, he received a letter from Hodgson, advising him to banish all
cares and to find in pleasure the distraction he needed. Lord Byron
replied by some lines which Moore has reproduced; but the last of which
he omitted to give, and which were written only to mystify the excellent
Mr. Hodgson, who always looked at every thing and every one in a bright
light, and whom Byron wished to frighten.

Here are the first lines:--

"Oh! banish ca