“I have done all I could for him since he came here [Genoa], but it is all most useless.  His wife is ill, his six children far from tractable, and in worldly affairs he himself is a child.  The death of Shelley left them totally aground; and I could not see them in such a state without using the common feelings of humanity, and what means were in my power, to set them afloat again....  As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion between him and me there is little or none; but I think him a good-principled man, and must do as I would be done by.”

Toward Shelley, Byron entertained the greatest respect and affection for his suavity, gentleness, and good breeding; and Shelley’s accidental death was a great shock to him.  Among his other intimate acquaintances in Italy were Lord and Lady Blessington, with whom he kept up a pleasant correspondence.  The most plaintive, sad, and generous of all his letters was the one he wrote to Lady Byron from Pisa, in 1821, in acknowledgment of the receipt of a tress of his daughter Ada’s hair:—­

“The time which has elapsed since our separation has been considerably more than the whole brief period of our union and of our prior acquaintance.  We both made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, and irrecoverably so....  But this very impossibility of reunion seems to me at least a reason why on all the few points of discussion which can arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life, and as much of its kindness as people who are never to meet may preserve more easily than nearer connections....  I assure you I bear you now no resentment whatever.  Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two things,—­that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never meet again.”

At this period, about a year before Byron’s death, Moore thus writes:—­

“To the world, and more especially England, he presented himself in no other aspect than that of a stern, haughty misanthrope, self-banished from the society of men, and most of all from that of Englishmen.  The more beautiful and genial inspirations of his muse were looked upon but as lucid intervals between the paroxysms of an inherent malignancy of nature.  But how totally all this differed from the Byron of the social hour, they who lived in familiar intercourse with him may be safely left to tell.  As it was, no English gentleman ever approached him with the common forms of introduction, that did not come away at once surprised and charmed by the kind courtesy of his manners, the unpretending play of his conversation, and on nearer intercourse the frank, youthful spirits, to the flow of which he gave way with such zest as to produce the impression that gaiety was after all the true bent of his disposition.”

Scott, writing of him after his death, says,—­

“In talents he was unequalled; and his faults were those rather of a bizarre temper, arising from an eager and irritable nervous habit, than any depravity of disposition.  He was devoid of selfishness, which I take to be the basest ingredient in the human composition.  He was generous, humane, and noble-minded, when passion did not blind him.”