following account of his own temper, from one of his journals, must be
taken with a due portion of that allowance for exaggeration, which his
style of self-portraiture, "overshadowing even the shade," requires.

"In all other respects," (he says, after mentioning his infant passion
for Mary Duff,) "I differed not at all from other children, being
neither tall nor short, dull nor witty, of my age, but rather
lively--except in my sullen moods, and then I was always a Devil.
They once (in one of my silent rages) wrenched a knife from me, which
I had snatched from table at Mrs. B.'s dinner (I always dined
earlier), and applied to my breast;--but this was three or four years
after, just before the late Lord B.'s decease.

"My _ostensible_ temper has certainly improved in later years; but I
shudder, and must, to my latest hour, regret the consequence of it and
my passions combined. One event--but no matter--there are others not
much better to think of also--and to them I give the preference....

"But I hate dwelling upon incidents. My temper is now under
management--rarely _loud_, and _when_ loud, never deadly. It is when
silent, and I feel my forehead and my cheek paling, that I cannot
control it; and then.... but unless there is a woman (and not any or
every woman) in the way, I have sunk into tolerable apathy."

Between a temper at all resembling this, and the loud hurricane bursts
of Mrs. Byron, the collision, it may be supposed, was not a little
formidable; and the age at which the young poet was now arrived;
when--as most parents feel--the impatience of youth begins to champ
the bit, would but render the occasions for such shocks more frequent.
It is told, as a curious proof of their opinion of each other's