Breakfast, in theory, could be served at any hour. The hour actually preferred by the majority of the party was one P.M. Matthews, who generally came down between eleven and twelve, "was esteemed a prodigy of early rising." Any one, he says, who had wanted to breakfast as early as ten "would have been rather lucky to find any of the servants up." Not until two P.M., as a rule, was the breakfast cleared away. The amusements of the afternoon--which Matthews euphemistically calls the morning--were "reading, fencing, single-stick, or shuttle-cock, in the great room, practising with pistols in the hall, walking, riding, cricket, sailing on the lake, playing with the bear, or teasing the wolf." Dinner was between seven and eight, and then--another euphemism most proper in a letter to a sister--"the evening diversions may be easily conceived." Those evening diversions consisted, in the first instance of dressing up and drinking. The beverages, according to Byron himself, were "burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not," quaffed not only out of ordinary glasses, but also out of a loving-cup fashioned from a skull which had been dug up in the Newstead grounds. As for the dressing-up; "A set of monkish dresses," says Matthews, "which had been provided, with all the proper apparatus of crosses, beads, tonsures, &c., often gave a variety to our appearance and to our pursuits," which pursuits consisted, in Byron's words, of "buffooning all round the house in our conventual garments." That Matthews speaks of tonsures as if they were articles of dress is neither here nor there; and there is no importance to be attached to his omission of all reference to the "buffooning." We know from Hobhouse that he played his part in it, and that one of the amusements of this brilliant young Fellow of Downing was to hide himself in a stone coffin in the Long Gallery and groan, by way of alarming his brother revellers. Evidently the Monks of Newstead, while taking some hints from the profane members of the Medmenham Hell Fire Club, carried out, to the best of their ability, the traditions of the Monks of Thelema. "Fays ce que voudras" might have been their motto; and the doing of what they wished appears to have involved and included the extension of invitations to the cook and the housemaid to participate in their pleasures. Moore says so, not as one who makes a charge, but as one who makes an admission to rebut a graver charge, and is full of sympathy for the exuberance of lusty youth. Moralists must make what they can of the story, and apportion censure and indulgence as they think just. The excesses, at any rate, whatever their degree and nature, did not fill Byron's life. He was getting on with his poetry in spite of them, though it would be too much to say that he had yet proved his title to be called a poet.