ling; and yet the
world in general has given me a proud pre-eminence over them in
profligacy. Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn
their aberrations; but I own I feel provoked when they dignify all this
by the name of love. Romantic attachments for things marketable for a
dollar!"

One of his biographers pretends that he rendered himself justice another
time, and represents him as saying, speaking of M----:

"See how well he has got on in the world! He is just as little inclined
to commit a bad action as incapable of doing a good one; fear keeps him
from the former, and wickedness from the latter. The difference between
him and me is that I attack a great many people, and truly, with one or
two exceptions (and note that they are persons of my own sex), I do not
hate one; while he says no harm of any one, but hates a great many, if
not every body. Fancy, then, how amusing it would be to see him in the
palace of Truth, when he would be thinking he was making the sweetest
compliments, while all the time he would be giving vent to the
accumulated spite and rancor of years, and then to see the person he had
flattered so long listen to his real sentiments for the first time. Oh!
that would truly be a comic sight. As to me, I should appear to great
advantage in the palace of Truth, for while I should be thinking to vex
friends and enemies with harsh speeches, I should be saying pretty
things on the contrary; for at bottom, _I have no malice or
ill-nature,--at least, not of that kind which lasts more than a
moment_."

"Never," adds the biographer, "was a truer observation made. Lord
Byron's nature is _very fine_, despite all the bad weeds that might have
attempted to spring up in it; and I am convinced that it is the
excellence of the poet, or rather the effect of such excellence, which
has caused the faults of the man.

"The severity of censure lavished on the man has increased in proportion
to the admiration excited by the poet, and often with the greatest
injustice. The world offered up incense to the poet, while heaping ashes
on the head of the man. He was indignant at such usage, and wounded
pride avenged itself by painting himself in the darkest colors, as if to
give a deeper hue than even his enemies had done; all the time forcing
them to admiration for his genius, as boundless as was their
disapprobation of his supposed character."[104]

Is this conversation real or imaginary? Doubt is allowabl