[38] See his "Life in Italy."
[39] Vide Kennedy.
[40] "Yesterday I paid him (to Scroope Davies) four thousand eight hundred pounds, ... and my mind is much relieved by the removal of that debt," he says in his memorandum of 1813. All his difficulties were inherited from his father, and not contracted by him personally.
[41] Although not rich, and on the point of undertaking a long and expensive journey, he devoted a large sum to the alleviation of the wants of that family.
CHAPTER X.
QUALITIES AND VIRTUES OF SOUL.
ANTIMATERIALISM.
Among Lord Byron's natural qualities we may rank his antipathy, not only for any thing like low sensuality or gross vice, but even for those follies to which youth and human nature are so prone. Whatever may have been said on this head, and notwithstanding the countenance Lord Byron's own words may have lent to calumnies too widely believed, it will be easy to prove the truth of our assertion. Let us examine his actions, his words (when serious), the testimony of those who knew him through life, and it will soon appear that this natural antipathy with him often attained to the height of rare virtue.
Lord Byron had a passionate nature, a feeling heart, a powerful imagination; and it can not be denied that, after the disappointment he experienced in his ethereal love entertained at fifteen, he fell into the usual round of university life. But as he possessed great refinement of mind, never losing sight of an ideal of moral beauty, such an existence speedily became odious to him. His companions thought it all quite natural and pleasant; but he disapproved of it and blamed himself, feeling ashamed in his own conscience.