Although Lord Byron remained two months in Constantinople, and visited every object of interest and curiosity within and around it, he yet brought away with him fewer poetical impressions than from any other part of the Ottoman dominions; at least he has made less use in his works of what he saw and learned there, than of the materials he collected in other places.

From whatever cause it arose, the self-abstraction which I had noticed at Smyrna, was remarked about him while he was in the capital, and the same jealousy of his rank was so nervously awake, that it led him to attempt an obtrusion on the ambassadorial etiquettes—­which he probably regretted.

It has grown into a custom, at Constantinople, when the foreign ministers are admitted to audiences of ceremony with the Sultan, to allow the subjects and travellers of their respective nations to accompany them, both to swell the pomp of the spectacle, and to gratify their curiosity.  Mr Adair, our ambassador, for whom the Salsette had been sent, had his audience of leave appointed soon after Lord Byron’s arrival, and his Lordship was particularly anxious to occupy a station of distinction in the procession.  The pretension was ridiculous in itself, and showed less acquaintance with courtly ceremonies than might have been expected in a person of his rank and intelligence.  Mr Adair assured him that he could obtain no particular place; that in the arrangements for the ceremonial, only the persons connected with the embassy could be considered, and that the Turks neither acknowledged the precedence, nor could be requested to consider the distinctions of our nobility.  Byron, however, still persisted, and the minister was obliged to refer him on the subject to the Austrian Internuncio, a high authority in questions of etiquette, whose opinion was decidedly against the pretension.

The pride of rank was indeed one of the greatest weaknesses of Lord Byron, and everything, even of the most accidental kind, which seemed to come between the wind and his nobility, was repelled on the spot.  I recollect having some debate with him once respecting a pique of etiquette, which happened between him and Sir William Drummond, somewhere in Portugal or Spain.  Sir William was at the time an ambassador (not, however, I believe, in the country where the incident occurred), and was on the point of taking precedence in passing from one room to another, when Byron stepped in before him.  The action was undoubtedly rude on the part of his Lordship, even though Sir William had presumed too far on his riband:  to me it seemed also wrong; for, by the custom of all nations from time immemorial, ambassadors have been allowed their official rank in passing through foreign countries, while peers in the same circumstances claim no rank at all; even in our own colonies it has been doubted if they may take precedence of the legislative counsellors.  But the rights of rank are best determined by the heralds, and I have only to remark, that it is almost inconceivable that such things should have so morbidly affected the sensibility of Lord Byron; yet they certainly did so, and even to a ridiculous degree.  On one occasion, when he lodged in St James’s Street, I recollect him rating the footman for using a double knock in accidental thoughtlessness.