1830.] John Gait and Lord Byron. 401 



writer of those respectable poems might himself be the mysterious man 

 with the scowl. However, the solution was expeditious,, and happily 

 complete. 



" On the following evening I embarked early, and soon after, the two 

 travellers came on board ; in one of whom I recognized the visitor to 

 the library, and he proved to be Lord Byron. In the little bustle and 

 process of embarking their luggage, his lordship affected, as it seemed 

 to me, more aristocracy than befitted his years or the occasion, and I 

 then thought of his scowl, and suspected him of pride and irascibility. 

 The impression that evening was not agreeable, but it was interesting, 

 and that forehead-mark, the frown, was calculated to awaken curiosity, 

 and to beget conjectures/' 



We must do Mr. Gait the justice to say that no man could have made 

 more of a frown. However, the rest is more to our taste. 



f< Hobhouse, with more of the commoner (and Mr. Gait might have 

 added, ' with more of the gentleman'), made himself one of the passen- 

 gers at once, but Byron held himself aloof, and sat on the rail, leaning 

 on the mizen shrouds, imbibing, as it were, poetical sympathy from the 

 gloomy rock, then dark and stern in the twilight. (Ten to one he was 

 sick.) There was in all about him that evening much waywardness, 

 he spoke petulantly to Fletcher, his valet, and was evidently ill at ease 

 with himself, and fretful towards others. I thought he would turn out 

 an unsatisfactory shipmate, yet there was something redeeming in the 

 tones of his voice," &c. 



Byron took three days to come round and look human. " About the 

 third day he relented from his rapt mood, as if he felt it was out of 

 place, and became playful." They then went to shooting at bottles 

 overboard, Byron was " not pre-eminently the best shot." They caught 

 a shark, and had a steak of him broiled for breakfast. Mr. Gait does not 

 tell us how the others liked it, but, for his own part, he considered it 

 " but a cannibal dainty." 



There is rather too much of this minuteness in the book ; but on the 

 general character of Byron's mind, tastes, life, loves, and poetry, his 

 biographer gives a good deal of new and true remark. In one instance 

 he charges the poet with plagiarism "from Mr. Gait," probably true enough, 

 for he plundered wherever he could, without the slightest ceremony in 

 the appropriation, and, odd as the matter may be, the suspicion is ren- 

 dered more probable, by his protesting that " Mr. Gait is the last person 

 on earth from whom any one would think of taking anything," an im- 

 pudent and insulting scoff, which the biographer has the heroism, or the 

 simplicity, to give to the world. 



The story of the Guiccioli is given j but Mr. Gait should have felt it 

 due to his own character to pronounce this a base and profligate con- 

 nection, and to stamp with the scorn they deserve the contemptible 

 family who could see one of their number thus living in open adultery 

 with any man. But we take it for granted that the gentlemen got their 

 stipend, and the lady her hire, regularly by the month. 



One fragment of character is still worth recording. We hope that it 

 may figure in some historic picture of the new school of feeling. When 

 that miserable man, Shelley, was drowned, the surviving partners of 

 the " Liberal" met to give him a classic burial. The performance was 

 quite poetic: open shore, resounding sea, distant forest, murmuring 

 waves, solemn strand, broad sun-bright waves, the " majesty of nature," 



M.M. Nerv Series.Voi.. X. No. 58. 3 E 



