ll he felt secure that he might rely on
his wife's fidelity and mercy, her silence and magnanimity, that he
changed his tone to one of aspersion and contempt, and his mode of
attack to that of charming, amusing, or inflaming the public with verses
against her and her friends. We have his own testimony to her domestic
merits in the interval between the parting and his lapse into a state of
malignant feeling. In March, 1816, within two months after her leaving
him, Byron wrote thus to Moore:--

"I must set you right in one point, however. The fault was _not_--no,
nor even the misfortune--in my 'choice' (unless in choosing at all);
for I do not believe--and I must say it, in the very dregs of all this
bitter business--that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a
kinder, or a more amiable and agreeable being than Lady B. I never had,
nor can have, any reproach to make her, while with me. Where there is
blame, it belongs to myself; and, if I cannot redeem, I must bear it."

To us, this is enough; and nothing that he wrote afterwards, in angry
and spiteful moods, can have the slightest effect on our impression of
her: but the case was otherwise at the time. Lord Byron's praise of her
to Moore was not known till the "Life" appeared; whereas pieces like
"The Chanty Ball," coming out from time to time, made the world suppose
that Lady Byron was one of those people, satirized in all literatures,
who violate domestic duty, and make up for it by philanthropic effort
and display. It is the prevalence of this impression to this day which
makes it necessary to present the reality of the case after the lapse of
many years. During Lady Byron's life, no one had a right to speak, if
she chose to be silent; but the more modest and shrinking she was
in regard to her own vindication, the stronger is the appeal to the
fidelity of her friends to see that her reputation does not suffer
through her magnanimity. We have guidance here in her own course in the
case of her parents. Abhorrent as all publicity was to her, she felt and
avowed the obligation to publish those facts of her life in which their
reputation was concerned. The duty is far more easy, but not less
imperative, to practise the same fidelity in regard to her, now that the
truth can be told of her without shocking her modesty. We may hear some
commonplaces about the feelings of the dead and the sensibilities of
survivors, as always happens in such cases: but the sensibilities