a calumny. Those who drew it took romance for
history. They charged or exaggerated incidents in his life and
peculiarities of his character; thus the harmony of the _tout ensemble_
was lost. Ugliness and eccentricity, which amuse, succeeded beauty and
truth, which are sometimes wearisome.

Those who knew and loved Lord Byron even more as a man than a genius
(and, after all, these are those who knew him personally) suffer by this
injustice done to him, and feel the absurdity of making so privileged a
being act so whimsical a part, and one so contrary to his nature as well
as to the reality of his life.

If this imaginary portrait, however, were more like those which his best
biographers have drawn of him, justice to his memory would become so
difficult a task as to be almost impossible. Happily it is not so; and
those who would conscientiously consult Moore, Parry, and Gamba, must
at least give up the idea that this admirable genius was the eccentric
and unamiable being he has been represented. To reach this point would,
perhaps, require a greater respect for truth.

Even in France there are many superior persons who, struck by the force
of facts, have at times endeavored to seize certain features which might
lead to the discovery of truth, and have attempted to show that Lord
Byron's noble character and beauty of soul, as well as his genius, did
honor to humanity. But their efforts have been vain in presence of the
absurd and contradictory creation of fancy which has been styled "Lord
Byron," and which with few modifications, continues to be called so to
this day.

How has this occurred? what gave rise to it? ignorance, or carelessness?
Both causes in France, added to revenge in England, which found its
expression in cant,--a species of scourge which is becoming quite the
fashion.

The first of these French biographers (I mean of those who have written
upon and wished to characterize Lord Byron), without knowing the man
they were writing about, set to work with a ready-made Byron. This, no
doubt, they found to be an easier method to follow, and one of which the
results must prove at least original. But where had they found, and from
whose hands did they receive this ready-made poet, whose features they
reproduced and offered to the world? Probably from a few lines, not
without merit, of Lamartine, who by the aid of his rich imagination had
identified Byron with the types which he had conceived for his Oriental
poe