’I say all this, because I own to you, that notwithstanding everything, I considered our reunion as not impossible for more than a year after the separation; but then I gave up the hope entirely and for ever.  But this very impossibility of reunion seems to me at least a reason why, on all the few points of discussion which can arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life, and as much of its kindness as people who are never to meet may preserve,—­perhaps more easily than nearer connections.  For my own part, I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations can awaken my resentments.  To you, who are colder and more concentrated, I would just hint, that you may sometimes mistake the depth of a cold anger for dignity, and a worse feeling for duty.  I assure you that I bear you now (whatever I may have done) no resentment whatever.  Remember, that, if you have injured me in aught, this forgiveness is something; and that, if I have injured you, it is something more still, if it be true, as the moralists say, that the most offending are the least forgiving.

’Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two things; viz., that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never meet again.  I think, if you also consider the two corresponding points with reference to myself, it will be better for all three.

’Yours ever,

‘NOEL BYRON.’

The artless Thomas Moore introduces this letter in the ‘Life,’ with the remark,—­

’There are few, I should think, of my readers, who will not agree with me in pronouncing, that, if the author of the following letter had not right on his side, he had at least most of those good feelings which are found in general to accompany it.’

The reader is requested to take notice of the important admission; that the letter was never sent to Lady Byron at all.  It was, in fact, never intended for her, but was a nice little dramatic performance, composed simply with the view of acting on the sympathies of Lady Blessington and Byron’s numerous female admirers; and the reader will agree with us, we think, that, in this point of view, it was very neatly done, and deserves immortality as a work of high art.  For six years he had been plunged into every kind of vice and excess, pleading his shattered domestic joys, and his wife’s obdurate heart, as the apology and the impelling cause; filling the air with his shrieks and complaints concerning the slander which pursued him, while he filled letters to his confidential correspondents with records of new mistresses.  During all these years, the silence of Lady Byron was unbroken; though Lord Byron not only drew in private on the sympathies of his female admirers, but employed his talents and position as an author in holding her up to contempt and ridicule before thousands of readers.  We shall quote at length his side of the story, which