'On March 15 [1812] [...] [Anne Isabella Milbanke] dined at Lady Melbourne's [...] [William Lamb] may have been genuinely tired of the principal topic as recorded in Annabella's journal -- Childe Harold, poem and poet, about both of whom his wife [Lady Caroline Lamb] had lost her head [...] 'Annabella could not join in that discussion, for she had not read Childe Harold. And she let another week go by before she did read it [...] on the following Sunday she surrendered to the spirit of the season, and began. Two days later she had finished the two cantos of which it then consisted; in her diary for March 24, she set down her opinion: '"It contains many stanzas in the best style of poetry. He is rather too much of a [italics]mannerist[end italics], that is, he wants variety in the turns of his expression. He excels most in the delineations of deep feeling, and in reflections relative to human nature." [...] 'Annabella met him the day after that entry in her diary.'