"Oh, Mrs. By," he exclaimed to his mother's maid. "I had but one friend in the world, and she is gone"; but he always said that of every friend who died--of Skinner Matthews who was drowned in the Cam; of John Wingfield who was drowned off Coimbra; and of Eddleston, the choir boy, whom he had admitted to his intimacy at Cambridge. He said it quite sincerely, giving emotion its hour, and then let his thoughts flow in other directions. On the day of Mrs. Byron's funeral he told his servant to fetch the gloves and spar with him; and the boy thought that he hit harder than usual. Then he threw down the gloves and left the room without a word, with the air of a man disgusted with himself for trying to kill devils like that; and presently he was in the thick of his preparations for the production of "Childe Harold." He had brought the manuscript of "Childe Harold" home with him, together with the manuscript of "Hints from Horace." He believed "Hints from Horace" to be much the greater work of the two; and his reasons for thinking so are easy to understand. "Hints from Horace" was a satire based on the best models, and composed on conventional lines. It could be compared with the models, and judged and "marked," like a schoolboy's theme. "Childe Harold" was an experiment. It expressed a personality--the personality of a very young man who was not yet quite sure of himself and, except when his temper was up, was afraid of being laughed at. Hobhouse--that candid, trusty, matter-of-fact friend--had seen it, and had criticised it pretty much in the spirit in which Mark Twain's jumping frog was criticised. He had failed to see any points in that poem different from any other poem. Byron, consequently, was sensitive and timorous about it. "Childe Harold," he felt, like "Hours of Idleness," would put him on his defence, whereas in "Hints from Horace," as in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," he would have the advantage of attacking. He needed the encouragement of flattery. One Dallas, a distant relative who now introduced himself and, for a season, doubled the parts, as it were, of literary mentor and literary valet, supplied the flattery, recognising that, whereas "Hints from Horace" was just a satire like another, "Childe Harold" was the expression of a new sentiment, hitherto unheard in English literature. "Hints from Horace," he thought, might be published, if the author wished it--it did not much matter one way or the other; but "Childe Harold" must be published. It was interesting; it was romantic; it would please. It was not merely a narrative, but a manifesto. It ignored conventions, lifted a mask, and revealed a man--a new and unsuspected type of man--beneath it.