rarely, unless possessed of an inordinate share of vanity, form a very exalted opinion of ourselves; and, in society, woe be to him who lets it be known that he thinks more highly of himself than of his neighbours, as this is a crime that arms every one against him.

1823.

GRATTAN.

I was much struck with the simplicity of Grattan's manners in private life: they were odd, but they were natural. Curran used to take him off, bowing to the very ground, and thanking God that he had no peculiarities of gesture or appearance,” in a way irresistibly ludicrous; and ✶✶ used to call him a sentimental harlequin !

1816.

MODE OF LIFE.

I DOUBT, Sometimes, whether, after all, a quiet and unagitated life would have suited me; yet I sometimes long for it. My earliest dreams (as most boys' dreams are) were martial; but a little later they were all for love and retirement, till the hopeless attachment to M* * * C✶ ✶ ✶ began and continued (though sedulously concealed) very early in my teens ;

MODE OF LIFE.

and so upwards for a time.

23

This threw me out

again "alone on a wide, wide sea." In the year 1804 I recollect meeting my sister at General Harcourt's in Portland Place. I was then one thing, and as she had always till then found me. When we met again in 1805 (she told me since) that my temper and disposition were so completely altered that I was hardly to be recognized. I was not then sensible of the change; but I can believe it and account for it.

1809.

AN EXECUTION AT ROME.

THE day before I left Rome I saw three robbers guillotined. The ceremony-including the masked priests; the half-naked executioners; the bandaged criminals; the black Christ and his banner; the scaffold; the soldiery; the slow procession, and the quick rattle and heavy fall of the axe; the splash of the blood, and the ghastliness of the exposed heads-is altogether more impressive than the vulgar and ungentlemanly dirty new-drop,' and dog-like agony of infliction upon the sufferers of the English sentence. Two of these men behaved calmly enough, but the first of the three died with great terror and reluctance. What was very horrible, he would not lie down; then his

24

AN EXECUTION.

neck was too large for the aperture, and the priest was obliged to drown his exclamations by still louder exhortations. The head was off before the eye could trace the blow; but from an attempt to draw back the head, notwithstanding it was held forward by the hair, the first head was cut off close to the ears: the other two were taken off more cleanly. It is better than the oriental way, and (I should think) than the axe of our ancestors. The pain seems little, and yet the effect to the spectator, and the preparation to the criminal, is very striking and chilling. The first turned me quite hot and thirsty, and made me shake so that I could hardly hold the opera-glass (I was close, but was determined to see, as one should see every thing, once, with attention); the second and third (which shows how dreadfully soon things grow indifferent), I am ashamed to say, had no effect on me as a horror, though I would have saved them if I could.

1817.

GOËTHE.

ENCLOSED is something which will interest you, to wit, the opinion of the greatest man of Germany-perhaps of Europe-upon one of the great men of your advertisements (all "famous hands," as Jacob Tonson used to say

of his ragamuffins), in short, a critique of Goëthe's upon Manfred. There is the original, an English translation, and an Italian one; keep them all in your archives, for the opinions of such a man as Goëthe, whether favourable or not, are always interesting-and this is more so, as favourable. His Faust I never read, for I don't know German; but Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me viva voce, and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. The first scene, however, and that of Faustus, are very similar.

1820.

INDEPENDENCE.

I SEE no merit in Lord **'s independence. Give me the man who is poor and untitled, with talents to excite temptation, and honesty to resist it, and I will give him credit for independence of principle, because he deserves it.

1823.

MELANCHOLY.

PEOPLE have wondered at the melancholy which runs through my writings. Others have wondered at my personal gaiety. But I recol

D

26

MELANCHOLY.

lect once, after an hour in which I had been sincerely and particularly gay and rather brilliant, in company, my wife replying to me, when I said (upon her remarking my high spirits), "And yet, Bell, I have been called and miscalled melancholy-you must have seen how falsely, frequently?" "No, Byron," she answered, "it is not so; at heart you are the most melancholy of mankind; and often when apparently gayest."

KEAN AND KEMBLE.

JUST returned from seeing Kean in Richard. By Jove, he is a soul! Life-nature-truthwithout exaggeration or diminution. Kemble's Hamlet is perfect;-but Hamlet is not Nature. Richard is a man; and Kean is Richard.

1814.

DEATH OF A FRIEND.

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