"8. St. James's Street, November 1, 1811.
"As I should be very sorry to interrupt your Sunday's engagement, if Monday, or any other day of the ensuing week, would be equally convenient to yourself and friend, I will then have the honour of accepting his invitation. Of the professions of esteem with which Mr. Rogers has honoured me, I cannot but feel proud, though undeserving. I should be wanting to myself, if insensible to the praise of such a man; and, should my approaching interview with him and his friend lead to any degree of intimacy with both or either, I shall regard our past correspondence as one of the happiest events of my life. I have the honour to be,
It can hardly, I think, be necessary to call the reader's attention to the good sense, self-possession, and frankness, of these letters of Lord Byron. I had placed him,--by the somewhat national confusion which I had made of the boundaries of peace and war, of hostility and friendship,--in a position which, ignorant as he was of the character of the person who addressed him, it required all the watchfulness of his sense of honour to guard from surprise or snare. Hence, the judicious reserve with which he abstained from noticing my advances towards acquaintance, till he should have ascertained exactly whether the explanation which he was willing to give would be such as his correspondent would be satisfied to receive. The moment he was set at rest on this point, the frankness of his nature displayed itself; and the disregard of all further mediation or etiquette with which he at once professed himself ready to meet me, "when, where, and how" I pleased, showed that he could be as pliant and confiding _after_ such an understanding, as he had been judiciously reserved and punctilious _before_ it.
Such did I find Lord Byron, on my first experience of him; and such,--so open and manly-minded,--did I find him to the last.
It was, at first, intended by Mr. Rogers that his company at dinner should not extend beyond Lord Byron and myself; but Mr. Thomas Campbell, having called upon our host that morning, was invited to join the party, and consented. Such a meeting could not be otherwise than interesting to us all. It was the first time that Lord Byron was ever seen by any of his three companions; while he, on his side, for the first time, found himself in the society of persons, whose names had been associated with his first literary dreams, and to _two_[33] of whom he looked up with that tributary admiration which youthful genius is ever ready to pay its precursors.