, it is something more
still, if it be true, as the moralists say, that the most offending
are the least forgiving.

"Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on
yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two
things,--viz. that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall
never meet again. I think if you also consider the two corresponding
points with reference to myself, it will be better for all three.

"Yours ever,

"NOEL BYRON."

It has been my plan, as must have been observed, wherever my
materials have furnished me with the means, to leave the subject of
my Memoir to relate his own story; and this object, during the two or
three years of his life just elapsed, I have been enabled by the rich
resources in my hands, with but few interruptions, to attain. Having
now, however, reached that point of his career from which a new start
was about to be taken by his excursive spirit, and a course, glorious
as it was brief and fatal, entered upon,--a moment of pause may be
permitted while we look back through the last few years, and for a
while dwell upon the spectacle, at once grand and painful, which his
life during that most unbridled period of his powers exhibited.

In a state of unceasing excitement, both of heart and brain,--for
ever warring with the world's will, yet living but in the world's
breath,--with a genius taking upon itself all shapes, from Jove down
to Scapin, and a disposition veering with equal facility to all
points of the moral compass,--not even the ancient fancy of the
existence of two souls within one bosom would seem at all adequately
to account for the varieties, both of power and character, which the
course of his conduct and writings during these few feverish years
displayed. Without going back so far as the Fourth Canto of Childe
Harold, which one of his bitterest and ablest assailants has
pronounced to be, "in point of execution, the sublimest poetical
achievement of mortal pen," we have, in a similar strain of strength
and splendour, the Prophecy of Dante, Cain, the Mystery of Heaven and
Earth, Sardanapalus,--all produced during this wonderful period of
his genius. To these also are to be added four other dramatic pieces,
which, though the least successful of his compositions, have yet, as
Poems, few equals in our literature; while, in a more especial
degree, they illustrate the versatility of taste and power so
remarkable in him, as being found