d, that on the
mysterious cause of the separation, it afforded no light
whatever;--that, while some of its details could never have been
published at all[1], and little, if any, of what it contained
personal towards others could have appeared till long after the
individuals concerned had left the scene, all that materially related
to Lord Byron himself was (as I well knew when I made that sacrifice)
to be found repeated in the various Journals and Memorandum-books,
which, though not all to be made use of, were, as the reader has seen
from the preceding pages, all preserved.

[Footnote 1: This description applies only to the Second Part of the
Memoranda; there having been but little unfit for publication in the
First Part, which was, indeed, read, as is well known, by many of the
noble author's friends.]

As far as suppression, indeed, is blamable, I have had, in the course
of this task, abundantly to answer for it; having, as the reader must
have perceived, withheld a large portion of my materials, to which
Lord Byron, no doubt, in his fearlessness of consequences, would have
wished to give publicity, but which, it is now more than probable,
will never meet the light.

There remains little more to add. It has been remarked by Lord
Orford[1], as "strange, that the writing a man's life should in
general make the biographer become enamoured of his subject, whereas
one should think that the nicer disquisition one makes into the life
of any man, the less reason one should find to love or admire him."
On the contrary, may we not rather say that, as knowledge is ever the
parent of tolerance, the more insight we gain into the springs and
motives of a man's actions, the peculiar circumstances in which he
was placed, and the influences and temptations under which he acted,
the more allowance we may be inclined to make for his errors, and the
more approbation his virtues may extort from us?

[Footnote 1: In speaking of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Life of Henry
VIII.]

The arduous task of being the biographer of Byron is one, at least,
on which I have not obtruded myself: the wish of my friend that I
should undertake that office having been more than once expressed, at
a time when none but a boding imagination like his could have
foreseen much chance of the sad honour devolving to me. If in some
instances I have consulted rather the spirit than the exact letter of
his injunctions, it was with the view solely of doing him more