on the
mystery, in the full knowledge of Dr. Lushington's judgment and all the
gossip of the day, professes to believe that "the causes of disunion did
not differ from those that loosen the links of most such marriages," and
writes several pages on the trite theme that great genius is incompatible
with domestic happiness. Negative instances abound to modify this sweeping
generalization; but there is a kind of genius, closely associated with
intense irritability, which it is difficult to subject to the most
reasonable yoke; and of this sort was Byron's. His valet, Fletcher, is
reported to have said that "Any woman could manage my lord, except my
lady;" and Madame De Stael, on reading the _Farewell_, that "She would
have been glad to have been in Lady Byron's place." But it may be doubted
if Byron would have made a good husband to any woman; his wife and he were
even more than usually ill-assorted. A model of the proprieties, and a
pattern of the learned philanthropy of which in her sex he was wont to
make a constant butt, she was no fit consort for that "mens insana in
corpore insano." What could her stolid temperament conjecture of a man
whom she saw, in one of his fits of passion, throwing a favourite watch
under the fire, and grinding it to pieces with a poker? Or how could her
conscious virtue tolerate the recurring irregularities which he was
accustomed, not only to permit himself, but to parade? The harassment of
his affairs stimulated his violence, till she was inclined to suspect him
to be mad. Some of her recently printed letters--as that to Lady Anne
Barnard, and the reports of later observers of her character--as William
Howitt, tend to detract from the earlier tributes to her consistent
amiability, and confirm our ideas of the incompatibility of the pair. It
must have been trying to a poet to be asked by his wife, impatient of his
late hours, when he was going to leave off writing verses; to be told he
had no real enthusiasm; or to have his desk broken open, and its
compromising contents sent to the persons for whom they were least
intended. The smouldering elements of discontent may have been fanned by
the gossip of dependants, or the officious zeal of relatives, and kindled
into a jealous flame by the ostentation of regard for others beyond the
circle of his home. Lady Byron doubtless believed some story which, when
communicated to her legal advisers, led them to the conclusion that the
mere fact of her belie