As to drunkenness, and all that, we are informed he was an anchorite.  Pages are given to an account of the biscuits and soda-water that on this and that occasion were found to be the sole means of sustenance to this ethereal creature.

As to the story of using his wife’s money, the lady gives, directly in the face of his own Letters and Journal, the same account given before by Medwin, and which caused such merriment when talked over in the Noctes Club,—­that he had with her only a marriage portion of 10,000 pounds; and that, on the separation, he not only paid it back, but doubled it. {119}

So on the authoress goes, sowing right and left the most transparent absurdities and misstatements with what Carlyle well calls ’a composed stupidity, and a cheerful infinitude of ignorance.’  Who should know, if not she, to be sure?  Had not Byron told her all about it? and was not his family motto Crede Byron?

The ‘Blackwood,’ having a dim suspicion that this confused style of attack and defence in reference to the two parties under consideration may not have great weight, itself proceeds to make the book an occasion for re-opening the controversy of Lord Byron with his wife.

The rest of the review devoted to a powerful attack on Lady Byron’s character, the most fearful attack on the memory of a dead woman we have ever seen made by living man.  The author proceeds, like a lawyer, to gather up, arrange, and restate, in a most workmanlike manner, the confused accusations of the book.

Anticipating the objection, that such a re-opening of the inquiry was a violation of the privacy due to womanhood and to the feelings of a surviving family, he says, that though marriage usually is a private matter which the world has no right to intermeddle with or discuss, yet—­

’Lord Byron’s was an exceptional case.  It is not too much to say, that, had his marriage been a happy one, the course of events of the present century might have been materially changed; that the genius which poured itself forth in “Don Juan” and “Cain” might have flowed in far different channels; that the ardent love of freedom which sent him to perish at six and thirty at Missolonghi might have inspired a long career at home; and that we might at this moment have been appealing to the counsels of his experience and wisdom at an age not exceeding that which was attained by Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Brougham.

’Whether the world would have been a gainer or a loser by the exchange is a question which every man must answer for himself, according to his own tastes and opinions; but the possibility of such a change in the course of events warrants us in treating what would otherwise be a strictly private matter as one of public interest.

’More than half a century has elapsed, the actors have departed from the stage, the curtain has fallen; and whether it will ever again be raised