The licence of the day as to getting drunk at dinner-parties, and leading, generally, what would, in these days, be called a disorderly life, was great.

We should infer that none of the literary men of Byron's time would have been ashamed of being drunk occasionally.

The Noctes Ambrosianae Club of 'Blackwood' is full of songs glorying, in the broadest terms, in out-and-out drunkenness, and inviting to it as the highest condition of a civilised being.

{178a} But drunkenness upon Lord Byron had a peculiar and specific effect, which he notices afterwards, in his Journal, at Venice: 'The effect of all wines and spirits upon me is, however, strange.

It settles, but makes me gloomy--gloomy at the very moment of their effect: it composes, however, though sullenly.' {178b} And, again, in another place, he says, 'Wine and spirits make me sullen, and savage to ferocity.' It is well known that the effects of alcoholic excitement are various as the natures of the subjects.