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 Moore speaks of the happy influence of Lady Blessington's society over the mind of Byron:—

"One of the most important services conferred upon Lord Byron by Lady Blessington during this intimacy, was that half reviving of his old regard for his wife, and the check which she contrived to place upon the composition of Don Juan, and upon the continuation of its most glaring immoralities. He spoke of Ada;, he said, 'has feasted on the smiles of her infancy and growth, but the tears of her maturity shall be mine.' Lady Blessington told him that if he so loved his child, he should never write a line that could bring a blush of shame to her cheek, or a sorrowing tear to her eye; and he said, 'You are right; I never recollected this. I am jealously tenacious of the undivided sympathy of my daughter; and that work, (Don Juan,) written to beguile hours of tristesse and wretchedness, is well calculated to loosen my hold on her affections. I will write no more of it—would that I had never written a line.' In this gentler mind, with old loves, old times, and the tenderest love that human heart can know, all conducing to soothe his pride and his dislike of Lady Byron, he learned that a near friend of her ladyship was in Genoa, and he requested Lady Blessington to procure for him, through this friend, a portrait of his wife. He had heard that Lady Byron feared he was about to come to England for the purpose of claiming his child. In requesting the portrait and in refuting the report, he addressed the following letter to Lady Blessington:—