my opinions. I had not so much scope for risibility the other day as I
could have wished, for I was seated near a woman, to whom, when a boy,
I was as much attached as boys generally are, and more than a man
should be. [3] I knew this before I went, and was determined to be
valiant, and converse with _sang froid_; but instead I forgot my
valour and my nonchalance, and never opened my lips even to laugh, far
less to speak, and the lady was almost as absurd as myself, which made
both the object of more observation than if we had conducted ourselves
with easy indifference. You will think all this great nonsense; if you
had seen it, you would have thought it still more ridiculous. What
fools we are! We cry for a plaything, which, like children, we are
never satisfied with till we break open, though like them we cannot
get rid of it by putting it in the fire.

I have tried for Gifford's _Epistle to Pindar_,[4] and the bookseller
says the copies were cut up for _waste paper_; if you can procure me a
copy I shall be much obliged. Adieu!

Believe me, my dear Sir, yours ever sincerely,

BYRON.



[Footnote 1: Francis Hodgson (1781-1852), educated at Eton (1794-99) and
at King's College, Cambridge, Scholar (1799), Fellow (1802), hesitated
between literature and the bar as his profession. For three years he was
a private tutor, for one (1806) a master at Eton. In 1807 he became a
resident tutor at King's. It was not till 1812 that he decided to take
orders. Two years later he married Miss Tayler, a sister of Mrs. Henry