s time; she gave Lady
Byron a solemn promise not to do so_.

* * * *

'So serious did Mrs. Mimms consider the conduct of Lord Byron, that
she recommended her mistress to confide all the circumstances to her
father, Sir Ralph Milbanke, a calm, kind, and most excellent parent,
and take his advice as to her future course. At one time Mrs. Mimms
thinks Lady Byron had resolved to follow her counsel and impart her
wrongs to Sir Ralph; but on arriving at Seaham Hall her ladyship
strictly enjoined Mrs. Mimms to preserve absolute silence on the
subject--a course which she followed herself;--so that when, six weeks
later, she and Lord Byron left Seaham for London, not a word had
escaped her to disturb her parents' tranquillity as to their
daughter's domestic happiness. As might be expected, Mrs. Mimms bears
the warmest testimony to the noble and lovable qualities of her
departed mistress. She also declares that Lady Byron was by no means
of a cold temperament, but that the affectionate impulses of her
nature were checked by the unkind treatment she experienced from her
husband.'

We have already shown that Lord Byron had been, ever since his
separation, engaged in a systematic attempt to reverse the judgment of
the world against himself, by making converts of all his friends to a
most odious view of his wife's character, and inspiring them with the
zeal of propagandists to spread these views through society. We have
seen how he prepared partisans to interpret the Fourth Canto of 'Childe
Harold.'

This plan of solemn and heroic accusation was the first public attack on
his wife. Next we see him commencing a scurrilous attempt to turn her to
ridicule in the First Canto of 'Don Juan.'

It is to our point now to show how carefully and cautiously this Don Juan
campaign was planned.

Vol. IV. p.138, we find Letter 325 to Mr. Murray:--

'Venice: January 25, 1819.

'You will do me the favour to _print privately, for private
distribution, fifty copies of "Don Juan."_ The list of the men to
whom I wish it presented I will send hereafter.'

The poem, as will be remembered, begins with the meanest and foulest
attack on his wife that ever ribald wrote, and puts it in close
neighbourhood with scenes which every pure man or woman must feel to be
the beastly utterances of a man who had lost all sense of decency. Such
a potion was