or answer his letters; that he was sorry he had written them, but might on similar provocations recur to the same vengeance.”  On another occasion he said, “Lady B.’s first idea is what is due to herself.  I wish she thought a little more of what is due to others.  My besetting sin is a want of that self-respect which she has in excess.  When I have broken out, on slight provocation, into one of my ungovernable fits of rage, her calmness piqued and seemed to reproach me; it gave her an air of superiority that vexed and increased my mauvaise humeur.”  To Lady Blessington as to every one, he always spoke of Mrs. Leigh with the same unwavering admiration, love, and respect.

“My first impressions were melancholy—­my poor mother gave them:  but to my sister, who, incapable of wrong herself, suspected no wrong in others, I owe the little good of which I can boast:  and had I earlier known her it might have influenced my destiny.  Augusta was to me in the hour of need a tower of strength.  Her affection was my last rallying-point, and is now the only bright spot that the horizon of England offers to my view.  She has given me such good advice—­and yet finding me incapable of following it, loved and pitied me but the more because I was erring.”  Similarly, in the height of his spleen, writes Leigh Hunt—­“I believe there did exist one person to whom he would have been generous, if she pleased:  perhaps was so.  At all events, he left her the bulk of his property, and always spoke of her with the greatest esteem.  This was his sister, Mrs. Leigh.  He told me she used to call him ‘Baby Byron.’  It was easy to see that of the two persons she had by far the greater judgment.”

Byron having laid aside Don Juan for more than a year, in deference to La Guiccioli, was permitted to resume it again, in July, 1822, on a promise to observe the proprieties.  Cantos vi.-xi. were written at Pisa.  Cantos xii.-xvi. at Genoa, in 1823.  These latter portions of the poem were published by John Hunt.  His other works of the period are of minor consequence.  The Age of Bronze is a declamation, rather than a satire, directed against the Convention of Cintra and the Congress of Verona, especially Lord Londonderry’s part in the latter, only remarkable, from its advice to the Greeks, to dread—­

  The false friend worse than the infuriate foe;

i.e. to prefer the claw of the Tartar savage to the paternal hug of the great Bear—­

  Better still toil for masters, than await,
  The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate.

In the Island—­a tale of the mutiny of the “Bounty”—­he reverts to the manner and theme of his old romances, finding a new scene in the Pacific for the exercise of his fancy.  In this piece his love of nautical adventure reappears, and his idealization of primitive life, caught from Rousseau and Chateaubriand.  There is more repose about this poem than in any of the