"I have seen him sometimes at Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, when receiving news of some stupid, savage attack, from those who, in violating justice, also did him considerable harm. No emotion of anger any longer mixed itself up with his generous indignation. He appeared rather to experience a mixture of contempt, almost of quiet austere pleasure, in the struggle his great soul sustained against fools."
When Shelley saw him again at Venice, in 1818, and painted him under the name of Count Maddalo, he said:—
"In social life there is not a human being gentler, more patient, more natural, and modest, than Lord Byron. He is gay, open, and witty; his graver conversations steep you in a kind of inebriation. He has travelled a great deal, and possesses ineffable charm when he relates his adventures in the different countries he has visited."
Mr. Hoppner, English consul at Venice, and Lord Byron's friend, who was living constantly with him at this time, sums up his own impressions in these remarkable terms:—
"Of one thing I am certain, that I never met with goodness more real than Lord Byron's."
And some years later, when Shelley saw Lord Byron again at Ravenna, he wrote to Mrs. Shelley:—
"Lord Byron has made great progress in all respects; in genius, temper, moral views, health, and happiness. His intimacy with the Countess G—— has been of inestimable benefit to him. A fourth part of his revenue is devoted to beneficence. He has conquered his passions, and become what nature meant him to be, a virtuous man."
In concluding these quotations, no longer requisite, I hope, I will only make one last observation, that all which infallibly changes in a bad nature never did change in him. Friendship, real love, all devoted feelings, lived on in him unchanged to his last hour. If he had had a bad disposition, been capricious, irritable, or given to anger, would this have been the case?
FOOTNOTES:
[106] Count Delladecima, to whom he gives this name in consequence of a habit which that gentleman had of using the phrase "in ultima analise" frequently in conversation.