ave to Moore, who is gone to Rome, my life in MS.,--in seventy-
eight folio sheets, brought down to 1816 . . . also a journal kept in
1814. Neither are for publication during my life, but when I am cold
you may do what you please. In the mean time, if you like to read
them you may, and show them to anybody you like. I care not. . . . '

He tells him also:--

'You will find in it a detailed account of my marriage and its
consequences, as true as a party concerned can make such an account.'

Of the extent to which this autobiography was circulated we have the
following testimony of Shelton Mackenzie, in notes to 'The Noctes' of
June 1824.

In 'The Noctes' Odoherty says:--

'The fact is, the work had been copied for the private reading of a
great lady in Florence.'

The note says:--

'The great lady in Florence, for whose private reading Byron's
autobiography was copied, was the Countess of Westmoreland. . . . Lady
Blessington had the autobiography in her possession for weeks, and
confessed to having copied every line of it. Moore remonstrated, and
she committed her copy to the flames, but did not tell him that her
sister, Mrs. Home Purvis, now Viscountess of Canterbury, had also made
a copy! . . . From the quantity of copy I have seen,--and others were
more in the way of falling in with it than myself,--I surmise that at
least half a dozen copies were made, and of these _five_ are now in
existence. Some particular parts, such as the marriage and
separation, were copied separately; but I think there cannot be less
than five full copies yet to be found.'

This was written _after the original autobiography was burned_.

We may see the zeal and enthusiasm of the Byron party,--copying seventy-
eight folio sheets, as of old Christians copied the Gospels. How widely,
fully, and thoroughly, thus, by this secret process, was society
saturated with Byron's own versions of the story that related to himself
and wife! Against her there was only the complaint of an absolute
silence. She put forth no statements, no documents; had no party, sealed
the lips of her counsel, and even of her servants; yet she could not but
have known, from time to time, how thoroughly and strongly this web of
mingled truth and lies was being meshed around her steps.

From the time that Byron first saw the importance of securing Wilson on
his side, and wrote to have his partisans