ight be guilty of exaggeration, or inventing what
astonished you; and indeed, though he was a speaker of the truth on
ordinary occasions,--that is to say, he did not tell you he had seen a
dozen horses when he had seen only two,--yet, as he professed not to
value the truth when in the way of his advantage (and there was
nothing he thought more to his advantage than making you stare at
him), the persons who were liable to suffer from his incontinence had
all the right in the world to the benefit of this consideration.'
{205a}

With a person of such mental and moral habits as to truth, the inquiry
always must be, Where does mystification end, and truth begin?

If a man is careless about his father's reputation for sanity, and
reports him a crazy suicide; if he gaily accuses his publisher and good
friend of double-dealing, shuffling, and dishonesty; if he tells stories
about Mrs. Clermont, {205b} to which his sister offers a public
refutation,--is it to be supposed that he will always tell the truth
about his wife, when the world is pressing him hard, and every instinct
of self-defence is on the alert?

And then the ingenuity that could write and publish false documents about
himself, that they might reappear in London papers,--to what other
accounts might it not be turned? Might it not create documents, invent
statements, about his wife as well as himself?

The document so ostentatiously given to M. G. Lewis 'for circulation
among friends in England' was a specimen of what the Noctes Club would
call 'bamming.'

If Byron wanted a legal investigation, why did he not take it in the
first place, instead of signing the separation? If he wanted to cancel
it, as he said in this document, why did he not go to London, and enter a
suit for the restitution of conjugal rights, or a suit in chancery to get
possession of his daughter? That this was in his mind, passages in
Medwin's 'Conversations' show. He told Lady Blessington also that he
might claim his daughter in chancery at any time.

Why did he not do it? Either of these two steps would have brought on
that public investigation he so longed for. Can it be possible that all
the friends who passed this private document from hand to hand never
suspected that they were being 'bammed' by it?

But it has been universally assumed, that, though Byron was thus
remarkably given to mystification, yet all his statements in regard to
this story are to be