It is true, amidst all this stimulating variety of objects, the
melancholy which he had brought from home still lingered around his
mind. To Mr. Adair and Mr. Bruce, as I have before mentioned, he gave
the idea of a person labouring under deep dejection; and Colonel Leake,
who was, at that time, resident at Ioannina, conceived very much the
same impression of the state of his mind.[4] But, assuredly, even this
melancholy, habitually as it still clung to him, must, under the
stirring and healthful influences of his roving life, have become a far
more elevated and abstract feeling than it ever could have expanded to
within reach of those annoyances, whose tendency was to keep it wholly
concentrated round self. Had he remained idly at home, he would have
sunk, perhaps, into a querulous satirist. But, as his views opened on a
freer and wider horizon, every feeling of his nature kept pace with
their enlargement; and this inborn sadness, mingling itself with the
effusions of his genius, became one of the chief constituent charms not
only of their pathos, but their grandeur. For, when did ever a sublime
thought spring up in the soul, that melancholy was not to be found,
however latent, in its neighbourhood?

We have seen, from the letters written by him on his passage homeward,
how far from cheerful or happy was the state of mind in which he
returned. In truth, even for a disposition of the most sanguine cast,
there was quite enough in the discomforts that now awaited him in
England, to sadden its hopes, and check its buoyancy. "To be happy at
home," says Johnson, "is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to
which every enterprise and labour tends." But Lord Byron had no
home,--at least none that deserved this endearing name. A fond family
circle, to accompany him with its prayers, while away, and draw round
him, with listening eagerness, on his return, was what, unluckily, he
never knew, though with a heart, as we have seen, by nature formed for