Baillie, to Lady Charlemont, and to other ornaments of their sex, whether I am exaggerating in the least when I say, that, in their whole lives, they have seen few beings so intellectual and well-tempered as Lady Byron.

’I wish to be as ingenuous as possible in speaking of her.  Her manner, I have no hesitation to say, is cool at the first interview, but is modestly, and not insolently, cool:  she contracted it, I believe, from being exposed by her beauty and large fortune, in youth, to numbers of suitors, whom she could not have otherwise kept at a distance.  But this manner could have had no influence with Lord Byron; for it vanishes on nearer acquaintance, and has no origin in coldness.  All her friends like her frankness the better for being preceded by this reserve.  This manner, however, though not the slightest apology for Lord Byron, has been inimical to Lady Byron in her misfortunes.  It endears her to her friends; but it piques the indifferent.  Most odiously unjust, therefore, is Mr. Moore’s assertion, that she has had the advantage of Lord Byron in public opinion.  She is, comparatively speaking, unknown to the world; for though she has many friends, that is, a friend in everyone who knows her, yet her pride and purity and misfortunes naturally contract the circle of her acquaintance.

’There is something exquisitely unjust in Mr. Moore comparing her chance of popularity with Lord Byron’s, the poet who can command men of talents,—­putting even Mr. Moore into the livery of his service,—­and who has suborned the favour of almost all women by the beauty of his person and the voluptuousness of his verses.  Lady Byron has nothing to oppose to these fascinations but the truth and justice of her cause.

’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,”—­to hold up a florid description of a woman suitable to Lord Byron, as if in mockery over the forlorn flower of virtue that was drooping in the solitude of sorrow.

’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;