e he thinks it best for his
wife to remain at home, he does not propose to share the retirement, but
prefers running his own separate career with such persons as thronged the
greenroom of the theatre in those days.

In commenting on Lord Byron's course, we must not by any means be
supposed to indicate that he was doing any more or worse than most gay
young men of his time. The licence of the day as to getting drunk at
dinner-parties, and leading, generally, what would, in these days, be
called a disorderly life, was great. We should infer that none of the
literary men of Byron's time would have been ashamed of being drunk
occasionally. The Noctes Ambrosianae Club of 'Blackwood' is full of
songs glorying, in the broadest terms, in out-and-out drunkenness, and
inviting to it as the highest condition of a civilised being. {178a}

But drunkenness upon Lord Byron had a peculiar and specific effect, which
he notices afterwards, in his Journal, at Venice: 'The effect of all
wines and spirits upon me is, however, strange. It settles, but makes me
gloomy--gloomy at the very moment of their effect: it composes, however,
though sullenly.' {178b} And, again, in another place, he says, 'Wine
and spirits make me sullen, and savage to ferocity.'

It is well known that the effects of alcoholic excitement are various as
the natures of the subjects. But by far the worst effects, and the most
destructive to domestic peace, are those that occur in cases where
spirits, instead of acting on the nerves of motion, and depriving the
subject of power in that direction, stimulate the brain so as to produce
there the ferocity, the steadiness, the utter deadness to compassion or
conscience, which characterise a madman. How fearful to a sensitive
young mother in the period of pregnancy might be the return of such a
madman to the domestic roof! Nor can we account for those scenes
described in Lady Anne Barnard's letters, where Lord Byron returned from
his evening parties to try torturing experiments on his wife, otherwise
than by his own statement, that spirits, while they steadied him, made
him 'gloomy, and savage to ferocity.'

Take for example this:--

'One night, coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me
(Lady B.) so indignantly collected, and bearing all with such a
determined calmness, that a rush of remorse seemed to come over him.
He called himself a monster, and, though his sister was present, threw
h