[Footnote 116:  This letter is but a fragment,—­the remainder being lost.]

* * * * *

In the extracts from his Journal, just given, there is a passage that cannot fail to have been remarked, where, in speaking of his admiration of some lady, whose name he has himself left blank, the noble writer says—­“a wife would be the salvation of me.”  It was under this conviction, which not only himself but some of his friends entertained, of the prudence of his taking timely refuge in matrimony from those perplexities which form the sequel of all less regular ties, that he had been induced, about a year before, to turn his thoughts seriously to marriage,—­at least, as seriously as his thoughts were ever capable of being so turned,—­and chiefly, I believe, by the advice and intervention of his friend Lady Melbourne, to become a suitor for the hand of a relative of that lady, Miss Milbanke.  Though his proposal was not then accepted, every assurance of friendship and regard accompanied the refusal; a wish was even expressed that they should continue to write to each other, and a correspondence, in consequence,—­somewhat singular between two young persons of different sexes, inasmuch as love was not the subject of it,—­ensued between them.  We have seen how highly Lord Byron estimated as well the virtues as the accomplishments of the young lady; but it is evident that on neither side, at this period, was love either felt or professed.[117]

In the mean time, new entanglements, in which his heart was the willing dupe of his fancy and vanity, came to engross the young poet:  and still, as the usual penalties of such pursuits followed, he again found himself sighing for the sober yoke of wedlock, as some security against their recurrence.  There were, indeed, in the interval between Miss Milbanke’s refusal and acceptance of him, two or three other young women of rank who, at different times, formed the subject of his matrimonial dreams.  In the society of one of these, whose family had long honoured me with their friendship, he and I passed much of our time, during this and the preceding spring; and it will be found that, in a subsequent part of his correspondence, he represents me as having entertained an anxious wish that he should so far cultivate my fair friend’s favour as to give a chance, at least, of matrimony being the result.

That I, more than once, expressed some such feeling is undoubtedly true.  Fully concurring with the opinion, not only of himself, but of others of his friends, that in marriage lay his only chance of salvation from the sort of perplexing attachments into which he was now constantly tempted, I saw in none of those whom he admired with more legitimate views so many requisites for the difficult task of winning him into fidelity and happiness as in the lady in question.  Combining beauty of the highest order with a mind intelligent and ingenuous,—­having just learning