"I passed my degrees in vice," he says, "very quickly, _but they were not after my taste_. For my juvenile passions, though most violent, were concentrated, and did not willingly tend to divide and expand on several objects. I could have renounced every thing in the world with those I loved, or lost it all for them; but fiery though my nature was, _I could not share without disgust in the dissipation common to the place, and time._" This makes Moore say, that even at the period to which we are alluding, his irregularities were much less sensual, much less gross and varied than those of his companions. Nevertheless it was his boyish university life that caused Lord Byron to be suspected of drawing his own likeness, when two years later, after his return from the East, he brought out "Childe Harold"--an imaginary hero, whom he imprudently surrounded with real circumstances personal to himself. Moore, with his usual good sense, protests strongly against such injustice, saying that, however dissipated his college and university life might have been during the two or three years previous to his first travels, no foundation exists, except in the imagination of the poet, and the credulity or malice of the world, for such disgraceful scenes as were represented to have taken place at Newstead, by way of inferences drawn from "Childe Harold." "In this poem," adds Moore, "he describes the habitation of his hero as a monastic dwelling---- 'Condemn'd to uses vile! Where Superstition once had made her den Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile.'" These exaggerated, if not imaginary descriptions, were, nevertheless, taken for serious, and literally believed by the greater part of his readers. Moore continues: "Mr. Dallas, giving way to the same exaggerated tone, says, in speaking of the preparations for departure made by the young lord, 'He was already satiated with pleasure, and disgusted with those comrades who possessed no other resource, so he resolved to overcome his senses, and accordingly dismissed his harem.' The truth is, that Lord Byron did not then even possess sufficient fortune to allow himself this Oriental luxury; his manner of living at Newstead was plain and simple. His companions, without being insensible to the pleasures afforded by liberal hospitality, were all too intellectual in their tastes and habits to give themselves up to vulgar debauchery. As to the allusions regarding his _harem_, it appears certain that one or two women were suspected _subintroductae_--to use the style of the old monks of the Abbey--but that even these belonged to the servants of the house. This is the utmost that scandal could allege as the groundwork for suspicion and accusation."