[28] [The "trivial particular" which suggested to Byron the friendlessness and desolation of the Childe may be explained by the refusal of an old schoolfellow to spend the last day with him before he set out on his travels. The friend, possibly Lord Delawarr, excused himself on the plea that "he was engaged with his mother and some ladies to go shopping." "Friendship!" he exclaimed to Dallas. "I do not believe I shall leave behind me, yourself and family excepted, and, perhaps, my mother, a single being who will care what becomes of me" (Dallas, _Recollections, etc._, pp. 63, 64). Byron, to quote Charles Lamb's apology for Coleridge, was "full of fun," and must not be taken too seriously. Doubtless he was piqued at the moment, and afterwards, to heighten the tragedy of Childe Harold's exile, expanded a single act of negligence into general abandonment and desertion at the hour of trial.] [ab] {22} _No! none did love him_----.--[D. pencil.] [29] The word "lemman" is used by Chaucer in both senses, but more frequently in the feminine.--[_MS. M._] [30] "Feere," a consort or mate. [Compare the line, "What when lords go with their _feires_, she said," in "The Ancient Fragment of the Marriage of Sir Gawaine" (Percy's _Reliques_, 1812, iii. 416), and the lines-- "As with the woful _fere_, And father of that chaste dishonoured dame." _Titus Andronicus_, act iv. sc. 1. Compare, too, "That woman and her fleshless Pheere" (_The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere_, line 180 of the reprint from the first version in the _Lyrical Ballads_, 1798; _Poems_ by S. T. Coleridge, 1893, App. E, p. 515).] [ac] {23} _Childe Burun_----.--[MS.] [31] [In a suppressed stanza of "Childe Harold's Good Night" (see p. 27, _var._ ii.), the Childe complains that he has not seen his sister for "three long years and moe." Before her marriage, in 1807, Augusta Byron divided her time between her mother's children, Lady Chichester and the Duke of Leeds; her cousin, Lord Carlisle; and General and Mrs. Harcourt. After her marriage to Colonel Leigh, she lived at Newmarket. From the end of 1805 Byron corresponded with her more or less regularly, but no meeting took place. In a letter to his sister, dated November 30, 1808 (_Letters_, 1898, i. 203), he writes, "I saw Col. Leigh at Brighton in July, where I should have been glad to have seen you; I only know your husband by sight." Colonel Leigh was his first cousin, as well as his half-sister's husband, and the incidental remark that "he only knew him by sight" affords striking proof that his relations and connections were at no pains to seek him out, but left him to fight his own way to social recognition and distinction. (For particulars of "the Hon. Augusta Byron," see _Letters_, 1898, i. 18, note.)] [ad] _Of friends he had but few, embracing none_.--[MS. erased.] [ae] _Yet deem him not from this with breast of steel_.--[MS. D.]