verwhelming Lord Byron's
mind at this time, and further aided by the insinuation of Mrs.
Claremont, made Lady Byron begin and continue to suspect that he was
mad, and so fully did she believe it, that from that hour, she could
never see him come near her without trembling. It was under the
influence of this absurd idea that she left him. Lady Byron was not
guilty of the reports then current against him. They were spread abroad
by her parents: she, on the contrary, as long as she thought him mad,
felt great sorrow at it. It was only when she had to persuade herself
that he was not mad, that she vowed hatred against him, convinced as she
was that he had only married her out of revenge, and not from love. But
if an imaginary fear, and even an unreasonable jealousy may be her
excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equally forgive her
silence? Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons which
kill at once, and defy all remedies, thus insuring the culprit's safety.
This silence it is which will ever be her crime, for by it she poisoned
the life of her husband.]

[Footnote 146: All this is either _false_ or _exaggerated_. Religious
criticisms were not so mild, though he had not in any way _attacked
religion_, and the Tories _never forgave_ his attack on the prince
regent, which they made a great noise about.]

[Footnote 147: See the description of her life made by him to Medwin
during his stay at Pisa.]

[Footnote 148: Lord Byron, in lines wrung from him by anguish and anger,
says _the moral Clytemnestra of thy lord_.]

CHAPTER XXIII.

LORD BYRON'S GAYETY AND MELANCHOLY.

HIS GAYETY.

A great deal has been said about Byron's melancholy. His gayety has also
been spoken of. As usual, all the judgments pronounced have been more or
less false. His temperament is just as little known as his disposition,
when people affect to judge him in an exclusive way.

Let me, then, be permitted in this instance also to re-establish truth
on its only sure basis, namely, facts.

Lord Byron was so often gay that several of his biographers had thought
themselves justified in asserting that _gayety_ and not _melancholy_
predominated in his nature. Even Mr. Galt, who only knew him at that
period of his life when melancholy certainly predominated, nevertheless
uses these expressions:--"Singular as it may seem, the poem itself
('Beppo,' his first essay of facetious poetry) has a stronger tone of
gayety than