Byron’s garrulity with regard to those delicate matters on which men of more prudence or chivalry are wont to set the seal of silence, has often the same practical effect as reticence; for he talks so much at large—­every page of his Journal being, by his own admission, apt to “confute and abjure its predecessor”—­that we are often none the wiser.  Amid a mass of conjecture, it is manifest that during the years between his return from Greece and final expatriation (1811-1816), including the whole period of his social glory—­though not yet of his solid fame—­he was lured into liaisons of all sorts and shades.  Some, now acknowledged as innocent, were blared abroad by tongues less skilled in pure invention than in distorting truth.  On others, as commonplaces of a temperament “all meridian,” it were waste of time to dwell.  Byron rarely put aside a pleasure in his path; but his passions were seldom unaccompanied by affectionate emotions, genuine while they lasted.  The verses to the memory of a lost love veiled as “Thyrza,” of moderate artistic merit, were not, as Moore alleges, mere plays of imagination, but records of a sincere grief.[1] Another intimacy exerted so much influence on this phase of the poet’s career, that to pass it over would be like omitting Vanessa’s name from the record of Swift.  Lady Caroline Lamb, granddaughter of the first Earl Spencer, was one of those few women of our climate who, by their romantic impetuosity, recall the “children of the sun.”  She read Burns in her ninth year, and in her thirteenth idealized William Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne) as a statue of Liberty.  In her nineteenth (1805) she married him, and lived for some years, during which she was a reigning belle and toast, a domestic life only marred by occasional eccentricities.  Rogers, whom in a letter to Lady Morgan she numbers among her lovers, said she ought to know the new poet, who was three years her junior, and the introduction took place in March, 1812.  After the meeting, she wrote in her journal, “Mad—­bad—­and dangerous to know;” but, when the fashionable Apollo called at Melbourne House, she “flew to beautify herself.”  Flushed by his conquest, he spent a great part of the following year in her company, during which time the apathy or self-confidence of the husband laughed at the worship of the hero.  “Conrad” detailed his travels and adventures, interested her, by his woes, dictated her amusements, invited her guests, and seems to have set rules to the establishment.  “Medora,” on the other hand, made no secret of her devotion, declared that they were affinities, and offered him her jewels.  But after the first excitement, he began to grow weary of her talk about herself, and could not praise her indifferent verses:  “he grew moody, and she fretful, when their mutual egotisms jarred.”  Byron at length concurred in her being removed for a season to her father’s house in Ireland, on which occasion he wrote one of his glowing farewell letters.  When she came back, matters were little