light. With such opinions, however, as he had long entertained of Mr.
Hunt's character and talents[1], the facility with which he now
admitted him--_not_ certainly to any degree of confidence or
intimacy, but to a declared fellowship of fame and interest in the
eyes of the world, is, I own, an inconsistency not easily to be
accounted for, and argued, at all events, a strong confidence in the
antidotal power of his own name to resist the ridicule of such an
association.

[Footnote 1: See Letter 317. p. 103.]

As long as Shelley lived, the regard which Lord Byron entertained for
him extended its influence also over his relations with his friend;
the suavity and good-breeding of Shelley interposing a sort of
softening medium in the way of those unpleasant collisions which
afterwards took place, and which, from what is known of both parties,
may be easily conceived to have been alike trying to the patience of
the patron and the vanity of the dependent. That even, however,
during the lifetime of their common friend, there had occurred some
of those humiliating misunderstandings which money
engenders,--humiliating on both sides, as if from the very nature of
the dross that gives rise to them,--will appear from the following
letter of Shelley's which I find among the papers in my hands.


TO LORD BYRON.

"February 15. 1823.

"My dear Lord Byron.