o is exiled by a faction has the consolation of thinking that
he is a martyr; he is upheld by hope and the dignity of his cause, real
or imaginary: he who withdraws from the pressure of debt may indulge in
the thought that time and prudence will retrieve his circumstances; he
who is condemned by the law as a term to his banishment, or a dream of
his abbreviation; or, it may be, the knowledge or the belief of some
injustice of the law, or of its administration, in his own particular.
But he who is outlawed by general opinion, without the intervention of
hostile politics, illegal judgment, or embarrassed circumstances,
whether he be innocent or guilty, must undergo all the bitterness of
exile, without hope, without pride, without alleviation. This case was
mine. Upon what grounds the public founded their opinion I am not aware;
but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me or of mine they knew
little, except that I had written what is called poetry, was a nobleman,
had married, became a father, and was involved in differences with my
wife and her relatives, no one knew why, because the persons complaining
refused to state their grievances. The fashionable world was divided
into parties, mine consisting of a very small minority; the reasonable
world was naturally on the stronger side, which happened to be the
lady's, as was most proper and polite. The press was active and
scurrilous; and such was the rage of the day that the unfortunate
publication of two copies of verses rather complimentary than otherwise
to the subjects of both, was tortured into a species of crime, or
constructive petty treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by
public rumor and private rancor; my name, which had been a knightly or a
noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the
Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and muttered,
and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was
unfit for me. I withdrew: but this was not enough. In other countries,
in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the
lakes, I was pursued and breathed upon by the light. I crossed the
mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled
myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes
him to the waters.

"If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered round
me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all pre