Byron had not yet done, this,
when he was rushing about between London, Brighton, Cambridge, and
Newstead--shooting, gambling, swimming, alternately drinking deep and
trying to starve himself into elegance, green-room hunting, travelling
with disguised companions,[1] patronizing D'Egville the dancing-master,
Grimaldi the clown, and taking lessons from Mr. Jackson, the distinguished
professor of pugilism, to whom he afterwards affectionately refers as his
"old friend and corporeal pastor and master." There is no inducement to
dwell on amours devoid of romance, further than to remember that they
never trenched on what the common code of the fashionable world terms
dishonour. We may believe the poet's later assertion, backed by want of
evidence to the contrary, that he had never been the first means of
leading any one astray--a fact perhaps worthy the attention of those moral
worshippers of Goethe and Burns who hiss at Lord Byron's name.
[Footnote 1: In reference to one of these, see an interesting letter
from Mr. Minto to the _Athenaeum_ (Sept. 2nd, 1876), in which with
considerable though not conclusive ingenuity, he endeavours to
identify the girl with "Thyrza," and with "Astarte," whom he regards
as the same person.
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