1830.] Lady Byron, Campbell, and Moore. 515 



The friends of Lord Byron's memory have undoubtedly a right to 

 demand something explicit on this point. What are those hateful dis- 

 closures which horrify every body who knows them, and which are too 

 horrifying to be let loose among the public ? If Lord Byron had com- 

 mitted crimes of a nature for which he deserved to be cast out from 

 society, even though he had made his exit by the scaffold, they could not 

 justify stronger expressions. 



" You said, Mr. Moore, that Lady Byron was unsuitable to her lord 

 the word is cunningly insidious, and may mean as much or as little as 

 may suit your convenience. But if she was unsuitable, I remark, that it 

 tells all the worse against Lord Byron. I have not read it in your book, 

 for I hate to wade through it; but they tell me, that you have not only 

 warily depreciated Lady Byron, but that you have described a lady 

 that would have suited him. If this be true, it is the unkindest cut of 

 all. But I trust there is no such passage in your book. Surely you 

 must be conscious of your woman with her ' virtue loose about her who 

 would have suited Lord Byron/ to be as imaginary a being as the 

 woman without a head. A woman to suit Lord Byron !!! Poo! poo! 

 I could paint to you the woman that could have matched him, if I had not 

 bargained to say as little as possible against him. 



" If Lady Byron was not suitable to Lord Byron, so much the worse 

 for his lordship. This was not kicking the dead lion, but wounding the 

 living lamb, who was already bleeding and shorn even to the quick. I 

 know that, collectively speaking, the world is in Lady Byron's favour; 

 but it is coldly favourable, and you have not warmed its breath. Time^ 

 however, cures every thing ; and even your book, Mr. Moore, may be 

 the means of Lady Byron's character being better appreciated." 



We know nothing in the severest displeasure that would not be justi- 

 fied against those who first charged Lord Byron's memory with the 

 crimes, which his wife's letter seems to reassert. Campbell's letter is 

 merely chivalric ; he thinks Lady Byron injured, and thinks that it is 

 his duty to fight her battle. But he is a stranger, and has no interest 

 of blood or companionship. With Lady Byron the whole affair is 

 different. 



Let Byron be what he might, he was her husband, and the father of 

 her child ; and it was her duty, if not to screen his memory, at least to 

 keep aloof from defacing it. It is impossible that any woman of her 

 years, mixing in general life, or even casually reading the newspapers, 

 should not be acquainted with the meaning annexed to the phrase of 

 " Horrible crimes ; crimes not to be named, hateful disclosures," &c. 

 Her ladyship has written more notes than one upon the topic, and her 

 observation, on hearing of Lord Byron's civilities to one of Lord Hol- 

 land's sons, "that Byron was a peculiarly dangerous companion for a young 

 man," was strongly expressive. The late lord may have left no friends. 

 But if we had seen a relative or friend scarcely laid in the grave when 

 such charges were flung upon his memory, we would have the assailants 

 before the world, and compel them either to speak out, or to acknow- 

 ledge themselves calumniators. And, if we did not this in sorrow and 

 love for our dead friend, we should do it in justice to mankind. What 

 man can hope to transmit an unsullied name to his children; if it be in 

 the power of the first idle pen to fasten a stigma upon his grave, that, if 

 living, would have sent him to it by the scorn of society, if not, by the 

 vengeance of the law ? 



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