"I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others during absence and distance."
"My greatest friend, Lord Clare, is at Rome," he wrote to Moore from Pisa, in March, 1822: "we met on the road, and our meeting was quite sentimental—really pathetic on both sides. I have always loved him better than any male thing in the world."
In June Lord Clare came to visit Byron, and on the 8th of that month Byron wrote to Moore:—
"A few days ago my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came over from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to England. As I have always loved him, since I was thirteen at Harrow, better than any male thing in the world, I need hardly say what a melancholy pleasure it was to see him for a day only; for he was obliged to resume his journey immediately."
On another occasion he told Medwin that there is no pleasure in existence like that of meeting an early friend.
"Lord Clare's visit," says Madame G——, "gave Byron the greatest joy. The last day they spent together at Leghorn was most melancholy. Byron had a kind of presentiment that he should never see his friend again, and in speaking of him, for a long time after, his eyes always filled with tears."
LONG (CLEON).
Edward Long was with Lord Byron at Harrow and at Cambridge. He entered the Guards, and distinguished himself in the expedition to Copenhagen. As he was on his way to join the army in the Peninsula, in 1809, the ship in which he sailed was run down by another vessel, and Long was drowned with several others.
Long's friendship contributed to render Byron's stay at Cambridge bearable after his beloved Harrow days.
"Long," says Lord Byron, "was one of those good and amiable creatures who live but a short time. He had talents and qualities far too rare not to make him very much regretted." He depicts him as a lively companion, with an occasional strange touch of melancholy. One would have said he anticipated, as it were, the fate which awaited him.