her, as the wild and incoherent
representations of a lunatic. On the day when Lady Byron parted from her
husband, did she enter his private room, and find him with the 'object of
his guilty passion?' and did he say, as they parted, 'When shall we three
meet again?' Is this to be considered as an actual occurrence, or as
another form of hallucination? It is quite inconsistent with the theory
of Lady Byron's insanity to imagine that her delusion was restricted to
the idea of his having committed 'incest.' In common fairness, we are
bound to view the aggregate mental phenomena which she exhibited from the
day of the marriage to their final separation and her death. No person
practically acquainted with the true characteristics of insanity would
affirm, that, had this idea of 'incest' been an insane hallucination,
Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which intervened between her
unhappy marriage and death, have refrained from exhibiting her mental
alienation, not only to her legal advisers and trustees, but to others,
exacting no pledge of secrecy from them as to her disordered impressions.
Lunatics do for a time, and for some special purpose, most cunningly
conceal their delusions; but they have not the capacity to struggle for
thirty-six years with a frightful hallucination, similar to the one Lady
Byron is alleged to have had, without the insane state of mind becoming
obvious to those with whom they are daily associating. Neither is it
consistent with experience to suppose that, if Lady Byron had been a
monomaniac, her state of disordered understanding would have been
restricted to one hallucination. Her diseased brain, affecting the
normal action of thought, would, in all probability, have manifested
other symptoms besides those referred to of aberration of intellect.

During the last thirty years, I have not met with a case of insanity
(assuming the hypothesis of hallucination) at all parallel with that of
Lady Byron's. In my experience, it is unique. I never saw a patient
with such a delusion. If it should be established, by the statements of
those who are the depositors of the secret (and they are now bound, in
vindication of Lord Byron's memory, to deny, if they have the power of
doing so, this most frightful accusation), that the idea of incest did
unhappily cross Lady Byron's mind prior to her finally leaving him, it no
doubt arose from a most inaccurate knowledge of facts and perfectly
unjustifi