e going on at that rate?'

North--'There, Porker! These things are part and parcel of the
chatter of every bookseller's shop; a fortiori, of every drawing-room
in May Fair. Can the matter stop here? Can a great man's memory be
permitted to incur damnation while these saving clauses are afloat
anywhere uncontradicted?'

And from this the conversation branches off into strong, emphatic praise
of Byron's conduct in Greece during the last part of his life.

The silent widow is thus delicately and considerately reminded in the
'Blackwood' that she is the talk, not only over the whisky jug of the
Noctes, but in every drawing-room in London; and that she must speak out
and explain matters, or the whole world will set against her.

But she does not speak yet. The public persecution, therefore, proceeds.
Medwin's book being insufficient, another biographer is to be selected.
Now, the person in the Noctes Club who was held to have the most complete
information of the Byron affairs, and was, on that account, first thought
of by Murray to execute this very delicate task of writing a memoir which
should include the most sacred domestic affairs of a noble lady and her
orphan daughter, was Maginn. Maginn, the author of the pleasant joke,
that 'man never reaches the apex of civilisation till he is too drunk to
pronounce the word,' was the first person in whose hands the
'Autobiography,' Memoirs, and Journals of Lord Byron were placed with
this view.

The following note from Shelton Mackenzie, in the June number of 'The
Noctes,' 1824, says,--

'At that time, had he been so minded, Maginn (Odoherty) could have got
up a popular Life of Byron as well as most men in England. Immediately
on the account of Byron's death being received in London, John Murray
proposed that Maginn should bring out Memoirs, Journals, and Letters
of Lord Byron, and, with this intent, placed in his hand every line
that he (Murray) possessed in Byron's handwriting. . . . . The strong
desire of Byron's family and executors that the "Autobiography" should
be burned, to which desire Murray foolishly yielded, made such an
hiatus in the materials, that Murray and Maginn agreed it would not
answer to bring out the work then. Eventually Moore executed it.'

The character of the times in which this work was to be undertaken will
appear from the following note of Mackenzie's to 'The Noctes' of August
1824, which we