.
Yours ever,
B.
To appease the pangs of hunger, and keep down his fat, Byron was in the habit of chewing gum-mastic and tobacco. For the same reason, at a later date, he took opium. The mistake which he makes in his letter to Hodgson (December 8,1811), "I do nothing but eschew tobacco," is repeated in
Don Juan
(Canto XII. stanza xiiii.):
"In fact, there's nothing makes me so much grieve,
As that abominable tittle-tattle,
Which is the cud eschewed by human cattle."