referred to Mary Chaworth, for he mentions the deathblow of his hope. In the 'Epistle to a Friend,' Byron mentions the effect which a chance meeting with Mary had upon him, causing him to realize that 'Time had not made him love the less.' The poems that have puzzled the commentator most were those which Byron addressed to 'Thyrza'--a mysterious personage, whose identity has not hitherto been discovered. The present writer proposes to enter fully, and, he hopes, impartially, into the subject, trusting that the conclusions at which he has arrived may ultimately be endorsed by others who have given their serious attention to the question at issue. In any attempt to unravel the mystery of the 'Thyrza' poems, it will be necessary to consider, not only the circumstances in which they were written, but also those associations of Byron's youth which inspired a love that endured throughout his life. Byron's attachment to his distant cousin, Mary Anne Chaworth, is well known. We know that his boyish love was not returned, and that the young heiress of Annesley married, in 1805, Mr. John Musters, of Colwick, in the neighbourhood of Nottingham. In order to account for these love-poems, it has been suggested that, subsequent to this marriage, Byron fell in love with some incognita, whose identity has never been established, and who died soon after his return to England in 1811. We are unable to concur with so simple a solution of the mystery, for the following reasons: It will be remembered that shortly after Mary Chaworth's marriage Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he formed a romantic attachment to a young chorister, named Edleston, whose life he had saved from drowning. Writing to Miss Elizabeth Pigot on June 30, 1807, Byron says: 'I quit Cambridge with very little regret, because our _set_ are vanished, and my musical _protégé_ (Edleston), before mentioned, has left the choir, and is stationed in a mercantile house of considerable eminence in the Metropolis. You may have heard me observe he is, exactly to an hour, two years younger than myself. I found him grown considerably, and, as you may suppose, very glad to see his former _Patron_.[30] He is nearly my height, very _thin_, very fair complexion, dark eyes, and light locks. 'My opinion of his mind you already know; I hope I shall never have occasion to change it.' On July 5, 1807, Byron again wrote to Miss Pigot: