depressing embarrassments, you would, as I do, bless my dearest friend and
brother, Byron." The whole transaction is a pleasing record of a benefit
that was neither sooner nor later resented by the receiver.

Among other associates of the same group should be mentioned Henry
Drury--long Hodgson's intimate friend, and ultimately his brother-in-law,
to whom many of Byron's first series of letters from abroad are
addressed--and Robert Charles Dallas, a name surrounded with various
associations, who played a not insignificant part in Byron's history, and,
after his death, helped to swell the throng of his annotators. This
gentleman, a connexion by marriage, and author of some now forgotten
novels, first made acquaintance with the poet in London early in 1808,
when we have two letters from Byron, in answer to some compliment on his
early volume, in which, though addressing his correspondent merely as
'Sir,' his flippancy and habit of boasting of excessive badness reach an
absurd climax.

Meanwhile, during the intervals of his attendance at college, Byron had
made other friends. His vacations were divided between London and
Southwell, a small town on the road from Mansfield and Newark, once a
refuge of Charles I., and still adorned by an old Norman Minster. Here
Mrs. Byron for several summer seasons took up her abode, and was
frequently joined by her son. He was introduced to John Pigot, a medical
student of Edinburgh, and his sister Elizabeth, both endowed with talents
above the average, and keenly interested in literary pursuits, to whom a
number of his letters are addressed; also to the Rev. J.T. Becher, author
of a treatise on the state of the poor, to whom he was indebted for
encouragement and counsel. The poet often rails at the place, which he
found dull in comparison with Cambridge and London; writing from the
latter, in 1807: "O Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee! and how I