and
ridicule before thousands of readers. We shall quote at length his side
of the story, which he published in the First Canto of 'Don Juan,' that
the reader may see how much reason he had for assuming the injured tone
which he did in the letter to Lady Byron quoted above. That letter never
was sent to her; and the unmanly and indecent caricature of her, and the
indelicate exposure of the whole story on his own side, which we are
about to quote, were the only communications that could have reached her
solitude.

In the following verses, Lady Byron is represented as Donna Inez, and
Lord Byron as Don Jose; but the incidents and allusions were so very
pointed, that nobody for a moment doubted whose history the poet was
narrating.

'His mother was a learned lady, famed
For every branch of every science known
In every Christian language ever named,
With virtues equalled by her wit alone:
She made the cleverest people quite ashamed;
And even the good with inward envy groaned,
Finding themselves so very much exceeded
In their own way by all the things that she did.
. . . .
Save that her duty both to man and God
Required this conduct; which seemed very odd.

She kept a journal where his faults were noted,
And opened certain trunks of books and letters,
(All which might, if occasion served, be quoted);
And then she had all Seville for abettors,
Besides her good old grandmother (who doted):
The hearers of her case become repeaters,
Then advocates, inquisitors, and judges,--
Some for amusement, others for old grudges.

And then this best and meekest woman bore
With such serenity her husband's woes!
Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore,
Who saw their spouses killed, and nobly chose
Never to say a word about them more.
Calmly she heard each calumny that rose,
And saw his agonies with such sublimity,
That all the world exclaimed, "What magnanimity!"'

This is the longest and most elaborate version of his own story that
Byron ever published; but he busied himself with many others, projecting
at one time a Spanish romance, in which the same story is related in the
same transparent manner: but this he was dissuaded from printing. The
booksellers, however, made a good speculation in publishing what they
called his domestic poems; that is, poems bearing more or less relation
to this sub