been an insane hallucination, Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which intervened between her unhappy marriage and death, have refrained from exhibiting her mental alienation, not only to her legal advisers and trustees, but to others, exacting no pledge of secrecy from them as to her disordered impressions.  Lunatics do for a time, and for some special purpose, most cunningly conceal their delusions; but they have not the capacity to struggle for thirty-six years with a frightful hallucination, similar to the one Lady Byron is alleged to have had, without the insane state of mind becoming obvious to those with whom they are daily associating.  Neither is it consistent with experience to suppose that, if Lady Byron had been a monomaniac, her state of disordered understanding would have been restricted to one hallucination.  Her diseased brain, affecting the normal action of thought, would, in all probability, have manifested other symptoms besides those referred to of aberration of intellect.

During the last thirty years, I have not met with a case of insanity (assuming the hypothesis of hallucination) at all parallel with that of Lady Byron’s.  In my experience, it is unique.  I never saw a patient with such a delusion.  If it should be established, by the statements of those who are the depositors of the secret (and they are now bound, in vindication of Lord Byron’s memory, to deny, if they have the power of doing so, this most frightful accusation), that the idea of incest did unhappily cross Lady Byron’s mind prior to her finally leaving him, it no doubt arose from a most inaccurate knowledge of facts and perfectly unjustifiable data, and was not, in the right psychological acceptation of the phrase, an insane hallucination.

Sir, I remain your obedient servant,

FORBES WINSLOW, M.D.

ZARINGERHOF, FREIBURG-EN-BREISGAU, Sept. 8, 1869.

-----

EXTRACT FROM LORD BYRON’S EXPUNGED LETTER.

TO MR. MURRAY.

’BOLOGNA, June 7, 1819.

. . .  ’Before I left Venice, I had returned to you your late, and Mr. Hobhouse’s sheets of “Juan.”  Don’t wait for further answers from me, but address yours to Venice as usual.  I know nothing of my own movements.  I may return there in a few days, or not for some time; all this depends on circumstances.  I left Mr. Hoppner very well.  My daughter Allegra is well too, and is growing pretty:  her hair is growing darker, and her eyes are blue.  Her temper and her ways, Mr. Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features:  she will make, in that case, a manageable young lady.