Lord Byron
From a letter to his friend Elizabeth Bridget Pigot sent from Trinity College, Cambridge, 5 July 1807, about John Edleston, a chorister at the college, upon whose death from TB, in 1811, Byron wrote a series of elegies entitled ‘Thyrza’, with the male pronouns changed to female for the purposes of publication:
“I rejoice to hear you are interested in my protégé ; he has been my almost constant associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His voice first attracted my attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manners attached me to him forever. ... I certainly love him more than human being, and neither time nor distance have had the least effect on my (in general) changeable disposition. ... He certainly is perhaps more attached to me than even I am in return. During the whole of my residence at Cambridge we met every day, summer and winter, without passing one tiresome moment, and separated each time with increasing reluctance. I hope you will one day see us together.”
Quoted in Life of Lord Byron by Thomas Moore (John Murray, 1844), page 54
NPG 142