a scurrilous publication, called The Scourge; in which he was not only treated with unjustifiable malignity, but charged with being, as he told me himself, the illegitimate son of a murderer.  I had not read the work; but the writer who could make such an absurd accusation, must have been strangely ignorant of the very circumstances from which he derived the materials of his own libel.  When Lord Byron mentioned the subject to me, and that he was consulting Sir Vickery Gibbs, with the intention of prosecuting the publisher and the author, I advised him, as well as I could, to desist, simply because the allegation referred to well-known occurrences.  His grand-uncle’s duel with Mr. Chaworth, and the order of the House of Peers to produce evidence of his grandfather’s marriage with Miss Trevannion; the facts of which being matter of history and public record, superseded the necessity of any proceeding.

Knowing how deeply this affair agitated him at that time, I was not surprised at the sequestration in which he held himself—­and which made those who were not acquainted with his shy and mystical nature, apply to him the description of his own Lara: 

The chief of Lara is return’d again,

And why had Lara cross’d the bounding main?—­
Left by his sire too young such loss to know,
Lord of himself; that heritage of woe. 
In him, inexplicably mix’d, appear’d
Much to be loved and hated, sought and fear’d,
Opinion varying o’er his hidden lot,
In praise or railing ne’er his name forgot. 
His silence form’d a theme for others’ prate;
They guess’d, they gazed, they fain would know his fate,
What had he been? what was he, thus unknown,
Who walk’d their world, his lineage only known? 
A hater of his kind? yet some would say,
With them he could seem gay amid the gay;
But own’d that smile, if oft observed and near
Waned in its mirth and wither’d to a sneer;
That smile might reach his lip, but pass’d not by;
None e’er could trace its laughter to his eye: 
Yet there was softness, too, in his regard,
At times a heart is not by nature hard. 
But once perceived, his spirit seem’d to hide
Such weakness as unworthy of its pride,
And stretch’d itself as scorning to redeem
One doubt from others’ half-withheld esteem;
In self-inflicted penance of a breast
Which tenderness might once have wrung from rest,
In vigilance of grief that would compel
The soul to hate for having loved too well. 
There was in him a vital scorn of all,
As if the worst had fall’n which could befall. 
He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurl’d;
A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped
By choice the perils he by chance escaped.