Social glories--Presentation to the Prince Regent--Sir Walter Scott--
Byron's beauty--Venetia--Affectations--His relation to the world--
The Man's Man: his letters--Lack of literary jealousy--Don Juan--
Hodgson and Webster contrasted--Mrs. Mule--The Prince Regent:
Fracas at Carlton House--Lines to a Lady Weeping--Hysterics of the
Press--The gloom of Byron's Journal--Byron as lover--His engage-
ment.

THROUGH his friendship with Moore, and the consequent
widening of his social relations, Byron first became
in the lesser but not wholly ignoble sense of the word,
civilised. It was odd that he should enter his natural spheres,
both intellectual and social, by favour of the son of an obscure
Irish tradesman--the old English Baron chaperoned, as it were,
by little Tommy Moore; and his earlier friends regarded the
paradoxical development with differing sensations. "This",
writes the jealous and exacting Dallas, "was the trying moment
of virtue, and no wonder it was shaken". "For some time",
says Galt, "after the publication of Childe Harold, the noble
author appeared to more advantage than I ever afterwards saw
him". William Bankes, remote and touchy, continually nagged
him in letters which Byron answered with extraordinary patience
and gentleness; Hodgson and Hobhouse, more genial and more
worldly, accepted the new state of things with amusement and
interest. Hobhouse, for that matter, belonged to the same set,
though his place in it was naturally less conspicuous. There
was no one whom they did not meet; and for all whom they
met, no matter how eagerly those were courted, Byron was the
cynosure. "Glory darted thick upon him from all sides",
continues Dallas; ". . . he was the wonder of greybeards, and
the show of fashionable parties".

One of these, in the June of 1812, was so fashionable that the
Prince Regent was among the earliest guests, and, noticing Byron,
asked who he was. On being told, he at once desired that Lord
Byron should be presented to him. In connection with this social
triumph--His Royal Highness was very gracious--a striking
instance of how delightful Byron could be with men (for with men

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