Page:Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron.pdf/81

 and that the least, where it is so little understood, that the semblance is not even assumed. About this period the Duke of Leeds and family arrived at Genoa, and passed a day or two there, at the same hotel where we were residing. Shortly after their departure, Byron came to dine with us, and expressed his mortification at the Duke's not having called on him were it only out of respect to Mrs. Leigh, who was the half sister of both. This seemed to annoy him so much, that I endeavored to point out the inutility of ceremony between people who could have no two ideas in common; and observed, that the gêne of finding one's self with people of totally different habits and feelings, was ill repaid by the respect their civility indicated. Byron is a person to be excessively bored by the constraint that any change of system would occasion, even for a day; yet his amour propre is wounded by any marks of incivility or want of respect he meets with. Poor Byron! he is still far from arriving at the philosophy that he aims at and thinks he has acquired, when the absence or presence of a person who is indifferent to him, whatever his station in life may be, can occupy his thoughts for a moment.

I have observed in Byron, a habit of attach-