"Yesterday, a very pretty letter from Annabella[98], which I answered. What an odd situation and friendship is ours!--without one spark of love on either side, and produced by circumstances which in general lead to coldness on one side, and aversion on the other. She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress--girl of twenty--a peeress that is to be, in her own right--an only child, and a _savante_, who has always had her own way. She is a poetess--a mathematician--a metaphysician, and yet, withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension. Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions, and a tenth of her advantages. [Footnote 97: His cousin, the present Lord Byron.] [Footnote 98: Miss Milbanke, afterwards Lady Byron.] "Wednesday, December 1. 1813. "To-day responded to La Baronne de Stael Holstein, and sent to Leigh Hunt (an acquisition to my acquaintance--through Moore--of last summer) a copy of the two Turkish tales. Hunt is an extraordinary character, and not exactly of the present age. He reminds me more of the Pym and Hampden times--much talent, great independence of spirit, and an austere, yet not repulsive, aspect. If he goes on _qualis ab incepto_, I know few men who will deserve more praise or obtain it. I must go and see him again;--the rapid succession of adventure, since last summer, added to some serious uneasiness and business, have interrupted our acquaintance; but he is a man worth knowing; and though, for his own sake, I wish him out of prison, I like to study character in such situations. He has been unshaken, and will continue so. I don't think him deeply versed in life;--he is the bigot of virtue (not religion), and enamoured of the beauty of that 'empty name,' as the last breath of Brutus pronounced, and every day proves it. He is, perhaps, a little opiniated, as all men who are the _centre_ of _circles_, wide or narrow--the Sir Oracles, in whose name two or three are gathered together--must be, and as even Johnson was; but, withal, a valuable man, and less vain than success and even the consciousness of preferring 'the right to the expedient' might excuse. "To-morrow there is a party of _purple_ at the 'blue' Miss * * *'s. Shall I go? um!--I don't much affect your blue-bottles;--but one ought to be civil. There will be, 'I guess now' (as the Americans say), the Staels and Mackintoshes--good--the * * * s and * * * s--not so good--the * * * s, &c. &c.--good for nothing. Perhaps that blue-winged Kashmirian butterfly of book-learning, Lady * * * *, will be there. I hope so; it is a pleasure to look upon that most beautiful of faces. "Wrote to H.:--he has been telling that I ----[99]. I am sure, at least, _I_ did not mention it, and I wish he had not. He is a good fellow, and I obliged myself ten times more by being of use than I did him,--and there's an end on 't.