This was high treason!  He had at last put himself beyond the mercy of the chosen people.  They had twaddled and stormed about his immorality, but his praise of Napoleon sent them into diabolic frenzy.  He was proclaimed an outlaw and hounded out of the country.  The beautiful and rich Lady Jersey, a leader of society, convinced that he was misunderstood and was being treated with unreasonable severity, defended him with all the strength of her resolute character, but malignity had sunk too deep even for her power and influence to avert the disaster.  So intense was the feeling engendered against him that it became dangerous for him to drive out without risking an exhibition of virulent hostility.  Had he merely abused the Prince Regent, it is improbable that any exception would have been taken to it; but to praise and show compassion for the Man of the French Revolution, who had fought for a new condition of things which threatened the fabric on which their order held its dominating and despotic sway, was an enormity they were persuaded even God in heaven could not tolerate; why then, should they be expected to do so?—­they were only human.  Both public and private resentment ran amok, and thus it was that the immortal poet’s belauding of the immortal Emperor became linked to the ignominy of being accused of gross immorality.  The reaction against this eccentric being was a fanaticism.  There was neither sense nor reason in it, and as he said, “If what they say of me be true, then I am not fit for England; but if it be false, then England is not fit for me”; and with this thought thrilling in his mind he left his native land, never more to see it.

Caught without a doubt by the spirit of the great man whose eulogy had given such offence in certain quarters, he embarked on the crusade of emancipating the Greeks, was stricken with fever, and died at Missolonghi.

Adhering to human tradition, the nation which had so recently cast him out became afflicted with grief.  Men and women cast reflection on themselves for their misguided judgment of him, and he became a god in memory again, his wife being a singular exception in the great demonstration of national penitence.  The incomparable poet had sinned grievously, if rumour may be relied upon, but he was made to suffer out of all proportion to his sinning.  His faults were only different from other men’s.  It may be said quite truly that one of his defects was in having been born a genius, and allowing himself to be idolised by a public whose opinions and friendships were shifty.  Second, he erred in disregarding and satirising puritanical conventionalisms.  Thirdly, and probably the most provocative of all, was his defiance of the fiery patriotism of some of the ruling classes in lauding him whom they stigmatised as the enemy of the human race and lampooning the precious Prince Regent.  His extraordinary talents did not shield him, any more than they did the hero of fifty pitched battles whose greatness he had extolled.