Gordons_,--_not_ the _Seyton Gordons_, as she disdainfully termed the
ducal branch,--told me the story, always reminding me how superior _her_
Gordons were to the southern Byrons, notwithstanding our Norman, and
always masculine, descent, which has never lapsed into a female, as my
mother's Gordons had done in her own person."

If, to be able to depict powerfully the painful emotions, it is
necessary first to have experienced them, or, in other words, if, for
the poet to be great, the man must suffer, Lord Byron, it must be owned,
paid early this dear price of mastery. Few as were the ties by which his
affections held, whether within or without the circle of relationship,
he was now doomed, within a short space, to see the most of them swept
away by death.[17] Besides the loss of his mother, he had to mourn over,
in quick succession, the untimely fatalities that carried off, within a
few weeks of each other, two or three of his most loved and valued
friends. "In the short space of one month," he says, in a note on Childe
Harold, "I have lost _her_ who gave me being, and most of those who made
that being tolerable."[18] Of these young Wingfield, whom we have seen
high on the list of his Harrow favourites, died of a fever at Coimbra;
and Matthews, the idol of his admiration at college, was drowned while
bathing in the waters of the Cam.

The following letter, written immediately after the latter event, bears
the impress of strong and even agonised feeling, to such a degree as
renders it almost painful to read it:--

LETTER 56. TO MR. SCROPE DAVIES.

"Newstead Abbey, August 7. 1811.