grief.[1] Another intimacy exerted so much influence on this phase of the
poet's career, that to pass it over would be like omitting Vanessa's name
from the record of Swift. Lady Caroline Lamb, granddaughter of the first
Earl Spencer, was one of those few women of our climate who, by their
romantic impetuosity, recall the "children of the sun." She read Burns in
her ninth year, and in her thirteenth idealized William Lamb (afterwards
Lord Melbourne) as a statue of Liberty. In her nineteenth (1805) she
married him, and lived for some years, during which she was a reigning
belle and toast, a domestic life only marred by occasional eccentricities.
Rogers, whom in a letter to Lady Morgan she numbers among her lovers, said
she ought to know the new poet, who was three years her junior, and the
introduction took place in March, 1812. After the meeting, she wrote in
her journal, "Mad--bad--and dangerous to know;" but, when the fashionable
Apollo called at Melbourne House, she "flew to beautify herself." Flushed
by his conquest, he spent a great part of the following year in her
company, during which time the apathy or self-confidence of the husband
laughed at the worship of the hero. "Conrad" detailed his travels and
adventures, interested her, by his woes, dictated her amusements, invited
her guests, and seems to have set rules to the establishment. "Medora," on
the other hand, made no secret of her devotion, declared that they were
affinities, and offered him her jewels. But after the first excitement, he
began to grow weary of her talk about herself, and could not praise her
indifferent verses: "he grew moody, and she fretful, when their mutual
egotisms jarred." Byron at length concurred in her being removed for a
season to her father's house in Ireland, on which occasion he wrote one of
his glowing farewell letters. When she came back, matters were little
better. The would-be Juliet beset the poet with renewed advances, on one
occasion penetrating to his rooms in the disguise of a page, on another
threatening to stab herself with a pair of scissors, and again, developing
into a Medea, offering her gratitude to any one who would kill him. "The