“As to my reading, I believe I may aver, without hyperbole, it has been tolerably extensive in the historical; so that few nations exist, or have existed, with whose records I am not in some degree acquainted, from Herodotus down to Gibbon.  Of the classics, I know about as much as most schoolboys after a discipline of thirteen years; of the law of the land as much as enables me to keep ’within the statute’—­to use the poacher’s vocabulary.  I did study the ’Spirit of Laws’ and the Law of Nations; but when I saw the latter violated every month, I gave up my attempts at so useless an accomplishment;—­of geography, I have seen more land on maps than I should wish to traverse on foot;—­of mathematics, enough to give me the headache without clearing the part affected;—­of philosophy, astronomy, and metaphysics, more than I can comprehend;[85] and of common sense so little, that I mean to leave a Byronian prize at each of our ’Almae Matres’ for the first discovery,—­though I rather fear that of the longitude will precede it.

“I once thought myself a philosopher, and talked nonsense with great decorum:  I defied pain, and preached up equanimity.  For some time this did very well, for no one was in pain for me but my friends, and none lost their patience but my hearers.  At last, a fall from my horse convinced me bodily suffering was an evil; and the worst of an argument overset my maxims and my temper at the same moment:  so I quitted Zeno for Aristippus, and conceive that pleasure constitutes the {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}.  I hold virtue, in general, or the virtues severally, to be only in the disposition, each a feeling, not a principle.[86] I believe truth the prime attribute of the Deity, and death an eternal sleep, at least of the body.  You have here a brief compendium of the sentiments of the wicked George Lord Byron; and, till I get a new suit, you will perceive I am badly clothed.

I remain,” &c.

Though such was, doubtless, the general cast of his opinions at this time, it must be recollected, before we attach any particular importance to the details of his creed, that, in addition to the temptation, never easily resisted by him, of displaying his wit at the expense of his character, he was here addressing a person who, though, no doubt, well meaning, was evidently one of those officious, self-satisfied advisers, whom it was the delight of Lord Byron at all times to astonish and mystify.  The tricks which, when a boy, he played upon the Nottingham quack, Lavender, were but the first of a long series with which, through life, he amused himself, at the expense of all the numerous quacks whom his celebrity and sociability drew around him.