the aristocratical Scotch.  She had a long list of ancestors, like Sir Lucius O’Trigger’s, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch Chronicles, Spalding, &c. in arms and doing mischief.  I remember well passing Loch Leven, as well as the Queen’s Ferry:  we were on our way to England in 1798.

     “Yours.

     “You had better not publish Blackwood and the Roberts’ prose,
     except what regards Pope;—­you have let the time slip by.”

* * * * *

The Pamphlet in answer to Blackwood’s Magazine, here mentioned, was occasioned by an article in that work, entitled “Remarks on Don Juan,” and though put to press by Mr. Murray, was never published.  The writer in the Magazine having, in reference to certain passages in Don Juan, taken occasion to pass some severe strictures on the author’s matrimonial conduct, Lord Byron, in his reply, enters at some length into that painful subject; and the following extracts from his defence,—­if defence it can be called, where there has never yet been any definite charge,—­will be perused with strong interest:—­

“My learned brother proceeds to observe, that ’it is in vain for Lord B. to attempt in any way to justify his own behaviour in that affair:  and now that he has so openly and audaciously invited enquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should not be plainly told so by the voice of his countrymen.’  How far the ‘openness’ of an anonymous poem, and the ‘audacity’ of an imaginary character, which the writer supposes to be meant for Lady B. may be deemed to merit this formidable denunciation from their ’most sweet voices,’ I neither know nor care; but when he tells me that I cannot ‘in any way justify my own behaviour in that affair,’ I acquiesce, because no man can ‘justify’ himself until he knows of what he is accused; and I have never had—­and, God knows, my whole desire has ever been to obtain it—­any specific charge, in a tangible shape, submitted to me by the adversary, nor by others, unless the atrocities of public rumour and the mysterious silence of the lady’s legal advisers may be deemed such.[2] But is not the writer content with what has been already said and done?  Has not ‘the general voice of his countrymen’ long ago pronounced upon the subject—­sentence without trial, and condemnation without a charge?  Have I not been exiled by ostracism, except that the shells which proscribed me were anonymous?  Is the writer ignorant of the public opinion and the public conduct upon that occasion?  If he is, I am not:  the public will forget both long before I shall cease to remember either.

“The man who is exiled by a faction has the consolation of thinking that he is a martyr; he is upheld by hope and the dignity of his cause, real or imaginary:  he who withdraws from the pressure of debt may indulge in the thought that time and prudence will retrieve