ss by putting her name into the mouth of every ribald, he
did a bold thing, and he knew it. He meant to do a bold thing. There
was a general outcry against it; and he fought it down, and gained his
point. By sheer boldness and perseverance, he turned the public from his
wife, and to himself, in the face of their very groans and protests. His
'Manfred' and his 'Cain' were parts of the same game. But the
involuntary cry of remorse and despair pierced even through his own
artifices, in a manner that produced a conviction of reality.

His evident fear and hatred of his wife were other symptoms of crime.
There was no apparent occasion for him to hate her. He admitted that she
had been bright, amiable, good, agreeable; that her marriage had been a
very uncomfortable one; and he said to Madame de Stael, that he did not
doubt she thought him deranged. Why, then, did he hate her for wanting
to live peaceably by herself? Why did he so fear her, that not one year
of his life passed without his concocting and circulating some public or
private accusation against her? She, by his own showing, published none
against him. It is remarkable, that, in all his zeal to represent
himself injured, he nowhere quotes a single remark from Lady Byron, nor a
story coming either directly or indirectly from her or her family. He is
in a fever in Venice, not from what she has spoken, but because she has
sealed the lips of her counsel, and because she and her family do not
speak: so that he professes himself utterly ignorant what form her
allegations against him may take. He had heard from Shelley that his
wife silenced the most important calumny by going to make Mrs. Leigh a
visit; and yet he is afraid of her,--so afraid, that he tells Moore he
expects she will attack him after death, and charges him to defend his
grave.

Now, if Lord Byron knew that his wife had a deadly secret that she could
tell, all this conduct is explicable: it is in the ordinary course of
human nature. Men always distrust those who hold facts by which they can
be ruined. They fear them; they are antagonistic to them; they cannot
trust them. The feeling of Falkland to Caleb Williams, as portrayed in
Godwin's masterly sketch, is perfectly natural, and it is exactly
illustrative of what Byron felt for his wife. He hated her for having
his secret; and, so far as a human being could do it, he tried to destroy
her character before the world, that she might not have