"Let Folly smile, to view the names Of thee and me in friendship twined; Yet Virtue will have greater claims To love, than rank with Vice combined. "And though unequal is thy fate, Since title deck'd my higher birth, Yet envy not this gaudy state, Thine is the pride of modest worth. "Our souls at least congenial meet, Nor can thy lot my rank disgrace; Our intercourse is not less sweet Since worth of rank supplies the place. "November, 1802."] [Footnote 33: There are, in other letters of the same writer, some curious proofs of the passionate and jealous sensibility of Byron. From one of them, for instance, we collect that he had taken offence at his young friend's addressing him "my dear Byron," instead of "my dearest;" and from another, that his jealousy had been awakened by some expressions of regret which his correspondent had expressed at the departure of Lord John Russell for Spain:-- "You tell me," says the young letter-writer, "that you never knew me in such an agitation as I was when I wrote my last letter; and do you not think I had reason to be so? I received a letter from you on Saturday, telling me you were going abroad for six years in March, and on Sunday John Russell set off for Spain. Was not that sufficient to make me rather melancholy? But how can you possibly imagine that I was more agitated on John Russell's account, who is gone for a few months, and from whom I shall hear constantly, than at your going for six years to travel over most part of the world, when I shall hardly ever hear from you, and perhaps may never see you again? "It has very much hurt me your telling me that you might be excused if you felt rather jealous at my expressing more sorrow for the departure of the friend who was with me, than of that one who was absent. It is quite impossible you can think I am more sorry for John's absence than I shall be for yours;--I shall therefore finish the subject."] [Footnote 34: To this tomb he thus refers in the "Childish Recollections," as printed in his first unpublished volume:-- "Oft when, oppress'd with sad, foreboding gloom, I sat reclined upon our favourite tomb." ] [Footnote 35: I find this circumstance, of his having occasionally slept at the Hut, though asserted by one of the old servants, much doubted by others.] [Footnote 36: It may possibly have been the recollection of these pictures that suggested to him the following lines in the Siege of Corinth:-- "Like the figures on arras that gloomily glare, Stirr'd by the breath of the wintry air, So seen by the dying lamp's fitful light, Lifeless, but life-like and awful to sight; As they seem, through the dimness, about to come down From the shadowy wall where their images frown." ] [Footnote 37: Among the unpublished verses of his in my possession, I find the following fragment, written not long after this period:--