“Hodgson will plague you, I fear, with verse;—­for my own part I will conclude, with Martial, ‘nil recitabo tibi;’ and surely the last inducement is not the least.  Ponder on my proposition, and believe me, my dear Moore, yours ever,

     “BYRON.”

* * * * *

Among those acts of generosity and friendship by which every year of Lord Byron’s life was signalised, there is none, perhaps, that, for its own peculiar seasonableness and delicacy, as well as for the perfect worthiness of the person who was the object of it, deserves more honourable mention than that which I am now about to record, and which took place nearly at the period of which I am speaking.  The friend, whose good fortune it was to inspire the feeling thus testified, was Mr. Hodgson, the gentleman to whom so many of the preceding letters are addressed; and as it would be unjust to rob him of the grace and honour of being, himself, the testimony of obligations so signal, I shall here lay before my readers an extract from the letter with which, in reference to a passage in one of his noble friend’s Journals, he has favoured me.

“I feel it incumbent upon me to explain the circumstances to which this passage alludes, however private their nature.  They are, indeed, calculated to do honour to the memory of my lamented friend.  Having become involved, unfortunately, in difficulties and embarrassments, I received from Lord Byron (besides former pecuniary obligations) assistance, at the time in question, to the amount of a thousand pounds.  Aid of such magnitude was equally unsolicited and unexpected on my part; but it was a long-cherished, though secret, purpose of my friend to afford that aid; and he only waited for the period when he thought it would be of most service.  His own words were, on the occasion of conferring this overwhelming favour, ‘I always intended to do it.’”

During all this time, and through the months of January and February, his poem of “Childe Harold” was in its progress through the press; and to the changes and additions which he made in the course of printing, some of the most beautiful passages of the work owe their existence.  On comparing, indeed, his rough draft of the two Cantos with the finished form in which they exist at present, we are made sensible of the power which the man of genius possesses, not only of surpassing others, but of improving on himself.  Originally, the “little Page” and “Yeoman” of the Childe were introduced to the reader’s notice in the following tame stanzas, by expanding the substance of which into their present light, lyric shape, it is almost needless to remark how much the poet has gained in variety and dramatic effect:—­