“I rejoice to hear you are interested in my protégé; he has been my _almost constant_ associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His _voice_ first attracted my attention, his _countenance_ fixed it, and his _manners_ attached me to him for ever. He departs for a mercantile house in town in October, and we shall probably not meet till the expiration of my minority, when I shall leave to his decision either entering as a partner through my interest or residing with me altogether. Of course he would in his present frame of mind prefer the latter, but he may alter his opinion previous to that period; however he shall have his choice. I certainly love him more than any human being, and neither time nor distance have had the least effect on my (in general) changeable disposition. In short we shall put Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby to the blush, Pylades and Orestes out of countenance, and want nothing but a catastrophe like Nisus and Euryalus to give Jonathan and David the ‘go by.’ He certainly is more attached to _me_ than even I am in return. During the whole of my residence at Cambridge we met every day, summer and winter, without passing _one_ tiresome moment, and separated each time with increasing reluctance.” [Sidenote: _The Adieu_] Eddleston gave Byron a cornelian (brooch-pin) which Byron prized much, and is said to have kept all his life. He probably refers to it, and to the inequality of condition between him and Eddleston, in the following stanza from his poem, _The Adieu_, written about this time:— “And thou, my friend, whose gentle love Yet thrills my bosom’s chords, How much thy friendship was above Description’s power of words! Still near my breast thy gift I wear Which sparkled once with Feeling’s tear, Of Love, the pure, the sacred gem; Our souls were equal, and our lot In that dear moment quite forgot; Let pride alone condemn.” The Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby mentioned in the above letter were at that time living at Llangollen, in Wales, and were known as the “Ladies of Llangollen,” their romantic attachment to each other having already become proverbial. When Miss Ponsonby was seventeen, and Lady E. Butler some twenty years older, they had run away from their respective and respectable homes in Ireland, and taking a cottage at Llangollen lived there, inseparable companions, for the rest of their lives. Letters and diaries of contemporary celebrities mention their romantic devotion. (The Duke of Wellington was among their visitors.) Lady Eleanor died in 1829, at the age of ninety; and Miss Ponsonby only survived her “beloved one” (as she always called her) by two years. [Sidenote: _Byron’s Nisus and Euryalus_] As to the allusion to Nisus and Euryalus, Byron’s paraphrase of the episode (from the 9th book of Virgil’s Æneid) serves to show his interest in it:—