J o o^ r\ 
 
 iSStSSSirnar^M 
 
/ ]a 
 
 SOME OBSCURE AND DISPUTED POINTS 
 IN BYRONIC BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 IM[l«[IRlL-»l»lirATIIIN 
 
 PRESENTED TO THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG 
 
 -r/ 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN C. ROE. 
 
 --><-► 
 
 LEIPZIG-R. 
 
 PRIN'rED liY OSWALD SCHMTDT 
 1893. 
 
TO MY FATHER 
 
 IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE. 
 
 ^'^5960 
 
Iiitrocliictioii. 
 
 I have persuaded myself, and 1 think with reason, that 
 writing on certain obscure and unconnected points in Byronic 
 biography is the only profitable proceeding in wanting on 
 Byron's life since the publication ot Jeaffreson's work 'The 
 Real Lord Byron', which, so far as the sources of information 
 at the disposal of Byronic biographers go up to the present 
 date, has given on the whole a faithful account of the great 
 poet's life, and has displayed much discernment and under- 
 standing of human nature in his explanations of the motives 
 of Byron's actions and his descriptions of the poet's friends 
 and surroundings. In fact, there can be no doubt that 
 Jeatfreson's work on Byron, though in some instances in- 
 accurate through the author's evident wish to render his 
 book pleasant reading and popular, is one of the best speci- 
 mens, if not the best English biographical composition of the 
 present century. 
 
 The first complete Life of Byron written after Moore's, 
 that of Gait {London 1830 ^), which has been valuable as 
 the first attempt at a relation of the history of the Byron 
 family and for his account of the poet's behaviour on board 
 the Malta packet, of which Gait was an eye witness, is defective 
 in that lack of ability of the biographer (which is charac- 
 teristic of contemporary biographies on men of genius) to 
 appreciate how much Byron's judgement and intellect was 
 
 Published by Colburn and Bentley. 
 
;•: .••: •-' -'•>• ' ^ VI __ 
 
 in advance of the world of his time. One of the most 
 startling proofs of the same may be found in the comparison 
 of tlie modernness of the sentiment and character of the 
 gi-eatest of his productions and the last of his poetical works 
 on which he Avrote, Don Juan, with that of English or foreign 
 productions of. the first half of the present century. 
 
 Sir Cosmo Gordon's 'Life and Genius of Lord Byron'/ 
 and Iley's 'Life, Writings, Opinions and Times of G. G. Noel 
 Byron etc.'- are full of absurdities. The biographies of Lake 
 (1827)'^ and Armstrong (1846) and all other writings on 
 Byron's life which preceeded the publication of the first 
 edition of Trelawny's book (1858) and the first lives of 
 Shelley (Medwin's 1S47, and Lady ShelJei/s 1859, both full of 
 errors, though givimj many facts hitherto unhnoicn), so far as 
 tlieir authors were not for some time companions or eye 
 witnesses of the poet's doings , as were Gait and Hunt , are 
 worthless for the purposes of critical research, as their 
 authors did not possess the necessary information for accurate 
 composition. 
 
 Eberty's work (first edition 1862, 2^*^ ed. 1879) is in 
 general a repetition of the facts stated in the biograpliical 
 portion of Moore's 'Life', with a limited use of Gait's book 
 as regards Byron's ancestors, and a few references to Dallas, 
 Lady Blessington, Gamba, Millingen, Bruno, Stanhope. Parry, 
 and in the second edition to Teresa Guiccioli's (then Marqtiise 
 de Boissy) book; and is little more than a popular exposi- 
 tion of Byron's life, Avithout critical treatment or references. 
 
 Elze's biography (P^ edition 1870. 3^'^ 1886) resembles 
 a catalogue of all manner of facts and nonsense , collected 
 with admirable industry from all available sources of in- 
 formation on Byronic biography, and thrown together with 
 
 1 London 1824. 
 - London 1825. 
 
 ^ Lake's book is a kind of vestpocket edition of Byron's Life, 
 published in Fiaukfort o/M. 
 
— vn — 
 
 little or no discrimination as to the worth, truth, and 
 character ot his Avitnesses and information. Another prime 
 fault in Elze's book is the total ignorance it displays of the 
 Byronic papers in the library of tlie British Museum, without 
 a knowledge of Avliicli intelligent writing on certain portions 
 of Byron's life is utterly impossible. Take for instance his 
 note to page 188 of the third edition of his work as regards 
 the relations of Lady Byron to Mrs. Leigh after Byron's 
 death (im Jalire 1840 otfenbarte sie {Lddy Bijron) Medora 
 Leigh, dass sie eine Tochter ihres Gemahls sei, mid sctzte^ 
 dcssen ungeaclitet^ allem Anschcin nacli das freundschafiliche Ver- 
 Mltnis zit Hirer Mutter bis mt deren Tode fort !!!). 
 
 I have noticed Prof. Elze's personal opinions on the 
 points I liave written only. Those portions of his w^ork which 
 justified Bleibtreu in calling it a KhitschjescMchte, and which 
 touch to a certain extent points on which I have endeavoured 
 to give the results of others investigation, or to throw new 
 light, I have ignored as unprofitable. 
 
 Nicliol's work (P^ edition 1880) on Byron in the English 
 Men of Letters, though written on a small compass and for 
 the most part not entering into details on the subjects with 
 which I have dealt, is an immense improvement on Elze's 
 book in its generally impartial attitude towards Byron as a 
 man, and more intelligent comprehension of his character. 
 
 Jeafi:reson's work ^ Avas first published in 1883 in 2 vols, 
 in 1884 a one volume edition appeared and then the so- 
 called standard edition , the two latter being especially in- 
 teresting in containing the Byronic papers in the possession 
 of Mr. Morrison, published by Jeaftreson in the Athenaeum 
 for August 4*^ and 18^^ 1888, besides some crushing remarks 
 on the ignorance and blundering of the reviewers of his 
 book in the "Quarterly" and "Nineteenth Century." 
 
 Since the publication of Jeattreson's book on Byron, the 
 
 ' The Real Lord B;yron; New Views of the Poet's Life, London, 
 Hurst & Blackett. 
 
— VII r — 
 
 only complete biography that has been published on the 
 poet, that of Roden Noel {London 1890), is essentially an 
 epitome of Jeaifreson's work, containing nothing new on the 
 subject with the exception of a schoolfellow of Byron's, Lord 
 Jocelyn's (Mr. Noel's grandfather) account of the general 
 character of Byron's behaviour at Harrow. 
 
 The only work on the history of English literature that 
 has disi)layed independent research, and an intelligent con- 
 ception of the great poet's character, that of Bleibtreu,^ is 
 excellent in many respects in the purely biographical parts 
 {besides containing the best literary criticism on Bf/rmi's works 
 that has been published up to the present date) having brought 
 to light and treated independently and judiciously several 
 ot the most obvious mistakes in Jeaffreson's work. Bleibtreu's 
 chief weakness is that of all literary historians when not 
 writing exclusively on any ^single author, that of not 
 possessing all the information procurable and adequate for 
 a critical treatment of the subject. His weakest point however 
 is his lack of knowledge of Shelleyan biography which causes 
 him to make some curious though pardonable mistakes, for 
 instance, his mistaking Jane Williams, wife of Captain Williams 
 who was drowned witli Shelley oif Via Reggio, for Jane 
 (Claire) Clairmont.- 
 
 Translations such as that of the Autobiographical portions 
 of ^loore's Life of Byron and Byron's letters therein contained 
 by Enge], and biographical prefaces to editions of his works, 
 I have not deemed necessary to mention as they depend 
 solely for their information on biographies of the poet. 
 
 Such work as Lady Morgan's Memoirs (London 1864), 
 those of Viscount ]\[elbourne (London 1878), and the ecclesi- 
 astically coloured memoirs of Hodgson (1878), and Harness 
 (1871), are interresting , especially the two former, for the 
 
 • Englische Litteratur-Gcscliicbto iiii 19. Jahrbundert. 
 2 Bleibtreu: Englisclic Litteratur-Geschichte im 19. Jahrh. 2 ed 
 p. 211. 
 
— IX — 
 
 light they throw on the character of the society and some 
 of the individnals Byron frequented from his arrival in Eng- 
 land from his first trip in the Orient, till his iinal departure 
 from England in the spring of 1816. The memoirs of Hodgson 
 are of minor impoi'tance since Jeattreson's publications in 
 the Athenseum, for strictly critical purposes, though essential 
 for a knowledge of the character of one of Byron's most 
 intimate friends. Harness' 'Life' contains but a few lines 
 referring to Byron. 
 
 Kennedy's 'Conversations on Religion'^ with its appendix, 
 Stanhope's Greece in 1823 and 1824,- containing the so- 
 called -sketch' of Byron printed also in the English trans- 
 lation of Elze's book, Milligen's Memoir on the affairs in 
 (jrreece,^ Finlay's 'Reminiscenses' of Byron in his TOstory of 
 Greece' * and 'History of the Greek Revolution' '"" (the ivording 
 of the part referring to Byro)i is the same in both luorks), 
 besides the value of their testimony as regards Byron's 
 department in Missolonghi, may be consulted with profit for 
 the different descriptions of the poet's character, which vary 
 in worth; that of the psalm-singing and ignorant Kennedy 
 is doubtless the worst, that of Finlay the best. 
 
 Such works as Blaquiere's 'Narrative of a second Visit 
 to Greece','' De Salvo's 'Lord Byron en Italie et en Grece'," 
 Washington Irving's 'Crayon Miscellany' "^ (Newstead Abbey 
 p. 323 — 441), Macay's 'Lord Byron at the Armenian Con- 
 vent',*' Roger'sJ^ and Coleridge's 'Table Talk', ^' and CVabbe 
 
 1 London 1830. 
 
 2 „• 1825. 
 ^ . 1831. 
 4 , 1877. 
 •^ , 1861. 
 « „ 1825. 
 ^ „ • 1825. 
 
 ^ Philadelpbia 1874. 
 
 '■^ Venice 1876. 
 »^' London 1856. 
 <t „ 1884. 
 
— X — 
 
 Robiusou's 'Diary'J are of secondary importance. The appendix 
 to the second edition of Hobhonse's 'Travels in AlV)ania'- is 
 chielly valnable as a sketch of Byron's character. 
 
 Other and more important sonrces of information on 
 Byron, snch as Trelawny's Records etc. Shelley's letters, and 
 others which I have cited in the following pages I omit 
 mentioning here. 
 
 AVorks on the history of English literatnre I have deemed 
 unnecessary to cite , as the biographical portions . with the 
 single exception of Bleibtren's work, are void of independent 
 research. 
 
 I have consulted all sources of information on Shelleyan 
 biography extant, but till the 'Shelley papers' are published, 
 if such be ever the case, no important acquisitions to our 
 knowledge may be expected in tliat direction. The best 
 biographies of Shelley up to the present date are those of 
 Jeaffreson, ■' and Dowden. ^ 
 
 The biography of Mrs. Shelley by Mrs. Julian Marshall ^ 
 is highly valuable in containing many hitherto unpublished 
 letters of importance to both Shelleyan and Byronic bio- 
 graphers. One of the most interesting portions of Mrs. 
 Marshall's work is the correspondence Avhicli took place after 
 Byron's death between Mrs. Shelley and Claire, and that 
 between Mrs. Shelley and Trelawny. 
 
 'Mrs. Shelley' by Lucy Madox Rossetti (London 1890) 
 is but an epitome of Mrs. Marshall's work, although written 
 independently of it. 
 
 Review articles on Shelley and other works on him, 
 which I have not found occasion to quote, I shall not mention 
 
 ' London and New York 1872. 
 
 1855. 
 '^ The Real Shelley 1885 (lluist .V Blaekottl. 
 
 •* Percy Bysshe Shelley 188G (Kegan Paul. French. Tiiibner A: Co.). 
 "' The Life and lietters of Mary Wollstoncraft Shelley by Mrs. 
 Julian Marshall, London 1889. 2 vol. 
 
— XI — 
 
 here, as I intend treating of him only so far as he plays a 
 role in Byronic biography. 
 
 The most complete bibliography on Byron's works and 
 life is that of John Anderson of the liritish Mnseum, which 
 is pnblished as an appendix to Roden Noel's 'Life of Byron' 
 (London 1890). Others less complete and referring more to 
 the pnrely biographical portions of wj'itings on Byron, may 
 be found in the 'Dictionary of National Biography' edited 
 by Leslie Stephen , and in the copious notes to the third 
 edition of Prof. Elze's book.^ 
 
 Essays of a more or less literary character on Byron - 
 are numerous, but are biographically worthless. 
 
 Manuscript Writings. 
 
 a) The Byronic Correspondence (British Museum). 
 
 b) Byronic writings belonging to Mr. Alfred Morrison. 
 
 c) Lady Dorchester's Byronic manuscripts. (Lady Dor- 
 chester is the eldest daughter of Hobhouse, Lord Broughton), 
 iinpnUished. 
 
 d) Lord Wentworth's papers, rnqmblishcd. 
 
 e) Claire Clairmont's letter to Byron (Egerton Mss. British 
 Museum). 
 
 f) Hobhouse papers (British Museum), /uipnhhshed. 
 
 g) The 'Shelley Papers', nnpublishcd. 
 
 Review Articles of Biographical character 
 
 Academy, Oct. 9, 1869. 
 
 , 23, 1875. 
 
 July 19, 1879. 
 
 Oct. 26, 1889. 
 
 ' Berlin 1886. 
 
 - e. g. Macaulay's. 
 
— XIT — 
 
 Athenaeum, March 27, 1858. 
 
 Nov. a 1861. 
 
 July 19, 1862. 
 
 Dec. 22, 1866. 
 
 May 16, 1868. 
 
 22, 1869. 
 
 Oct. 9, 1869. 
 
 Nov. 20, 1869. 
 
 27, 1869. 
 
 Jail. 6, 1872. 
 
 ,, April 5, 1873. 
 
 — 1876, II, p. 806. 
 April 27, 1878. 
 March 29, 1879. 
 April 5, 1879. 
 Deo. 24, 1881. 
 July 15, 1882. 
 Dec. 12, 1882. 
 May 12, 1883. 
 Aug. 4, 1883. 
 
 18, 1883. 
 May 24, 1884. 
 July 5, 1884. 
 Aug. 30, 1884. 
 Sept. 6, 1884. 
 
 19, 1885. 
 ,, ,. 26, 1885. 
 
 Oct. 3, 1885. 
 
 31, 1885. 
 Dec. 5, 1885. 
 
 19, 1885. 
 
 26, 1885. 
 Jau. 9, 1886. 
 
 16, 1886. 
 
 23, 1886. 
 May 22, 1886. 
 
— XIII — 
 
 Since 1886 no article of biographical character has 
 appeared on either Byron or Shelley in this journal with 
 the single exception of the critique on Mrs. Marshall's book 
 in the Athenaeum for Nov. 23, 1889. Ten other articles 
 which have appeared on Shelley, are critiques on editions 
 of his works or on works of a purely character referring to 
 them. Nothing of the nature of literary criticism whatever 
 has appeared in the above mentioned journal since 1886 on 
 Byron. 
 
 Academy 
 
 Oct. 
 
 9, 
 
 1869. 
 
 55 
 
 11 
 
 23, 
 
 1875. 
 
 11 
 
 •My 
 
 19, 
 
 1879. 
 
 11 
 
 Oct. 
 
 26, 
 
 1889. 
 
 11 
 
 Dec. 
 
 12, 
 
 1890. 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine Aug. 1819. 
 
 » 
 
 
 « 
 
 Jan. 1822. 
 
 » 
 
 
 n 
 
 June 1824. 
 
 n 
 
 
 n 
 
 Jan. 1834. 
 
 11 
 
 
 11 
 
 July 1869. 
 
 n 
 
 
 11 
 
 Jan. 1870. 
 
 n 
 
 
 11 
 
 Feb. 1870. 
 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, Dec. 1, 1873. 
 „ Jan. 15, 1882. 
 
 Edinburgh Review, April 1871. 
 
 11 11 11 '^SIS. 
 
 Oct. 1882. 
 
 Frazer's Magazine June 1858. 
 March 1860. 
 
 Fortnightly, June 1878. 
 
 Lancet, Sept. 20, 1827. 
 „ June 2, 1883. 
 
 Literary Gazette, May 19, 1821. 
 
— XIV — 
 
 London Magazine, Oct. 1824. 
 
 New Monthly 1830, I. 
 1835, III. 
 
 Nineteenth Century, Aug. 1883. 
 Nov. 1891. 
 
 Notes and Queries, Series I— VII, London 1849. 
 
 Quarterly Review, June 1853. 
 Oct. 1869. 
 Jan. 1870. 
 Jan. 1878. 
 July 1883. 
 
 Victoria Magazine, Nov. 1873. 
 
 Westminster Review, July 1824. 
 Jan. 1825. 
 
 The Relations of Lord Byron to Robert Southey (Ver- 
 haltnis von Robert Southey zu Lord Byron), AngJia, III 426. 
 
 Herrig's Archiv, Bd. 70, p. 459, Contains a critique of 
 Jeaffreson's book. 
 
 n 
 
 J? 
 
 n 
 
 )5 
 
 jj 
 
 JJ 
 
 n 
 
 5) 
 
SOME OBSCURE AND DISPUTED 
 POINTS IN BYRONIC BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 JOHN C. KOE. 
 
Contents. 
 
 page 
 I. 'Thyrza' 1 
 
 II. On the probability of Byron's having had an illegitimate child 
 
 before the birth of Allegra 5 
 
 III. Some remarks on the article in the 'Edinburgh Review' on 
 'Hours of Idleness' 9 
 
 IV. Diverse minor points 11 
 
 V. Some new views regarding the separation of Lord and Lady 
 
 Byron 13 
 
 VI. Byron's relationship to Mary Jane Clairmont 17 
 
 VII. Preliminary arrangements for the meeting of Shelley, Mar}' 
 Godwin. Mary Jane Clairmont and Byron at Dejean's Hotel 
 
 d'Angleterre at Secheron (near Geneva) 22 
 
 VIII. Byron's affection for Teresa Gamba Guiccioli 24 
 
 IX. Preliminary intercourse between Byron, Shelley and Leigh 
 Hunt as regards the editing of a projected journal afterwards 
 called 'The Liberal' 30 
 
From Byron's birth (which in spite of what Dallas and 
 several others have said in favonr of Dover, most probably- 
 took place in No. 24 Holies Street, London, on the 22ntl of 
 January 1788^ till he became a member of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, in October 1805, his life is comparatively free 
 from events of vital importance unknown to Byronic bio- 
 graphers. Most individuals who had an important influence 
 on the poet's character are known, at least by name, up to 
 that date. 
 
 I. 
 Thyrza'. 
 
 Referring to his friendship for Edward Noel Long, Byron 
 writes in one of his journals, — "His friendship, and a vio- 
 lent, though pure, love and passion — which held me at the 
 
 1 See Add. MS. 31037, p. 7. British Museum. Letter from 
 Byron's mother to Mrs. Leigh (wife ot General Leigh, residing in London) 
 dated Aberdeen May 5tli 179L Extract: "I hope you will excuse the 
 trouble I am going to give you. It will be doing me a very particular 
 favour, if you would send for Mr. Hunter the surgeon and give him the 
 enclosed letter from me, it is about getting a proper shoe for George's 
 foot, as I cannot get a right one made here. Mr. Hunter some time 
 ago wrote to Dr. Livingstone, giving him directions how it should be 
 made, but it never was right (s/c) made or it would have answered 
 better, and as Mr. Hunter saw George when he was born, lam in hopes, 
 he will be able to give directions for a proper shoe to be made, without 
 seeing it (sic) again. Nothing but want of money prevents my sending 
 him up to London for Mr. Hunter to see his foot." 
 
— 2 — 
 
 same period {summer of 1806) — were the then romance of 
 the most romantic period of my life". ^ 
 
 There are many reasons against considering the person 
 who inspired this ^pure love and passion' as the girl in boy's 
 clothing', who was domesticated with Byron at Brompton in 
 1808, who, at least on one occasion, was introduced by him 
 to acquaintances as his brother Gordon, and whose reply to 
 the remark of a lady at Brighton concerning the beauty of 
 lier (the girl's) horse, was, "Yes it was gave me by my 
 brother."- There is, as yet, no published evidence that 
 Byron knew this girl previous to 1808. That she could 
 scarcely have been anything but a 'sancy fille dc joie' as 
 Jeaifreson^ terms her, is sufficiently proved, by the fact of 
 her having followed around in male attire, a highly egotis- 
 tical youth of eighteen. This girl has been considered as 
 the original of 'Thyrza' by Minto, the author of several short 
 articles on Byron, ^ but to make this appear highly impro- 
 bable, it is sufficient to quote the eight and ninth stanzas 
 of the poem 'To Thyrza', written on the 11 tb of October 
 1811.^ 
 
 "Ours too the glance none saw besides; 
 The smile none else might understand; 
 The whispered thoughts of hearts allied. 
 The pressure of the thrilling hand." 
 
 "The kiss so guiltless and refined 
 That love each warmer wish forbore; 
 
 ' 'Life. Letters, and Journals of Lord Byron' by Thomas Moore. 
 1 vol. edition, London, 1838. p. .^2. (23.) 
 
 2 'More's Life' etc. 1 vol. ed. p. 70. 
 
 3 'The Real Lord Byron, the Story of the Poet's Life. Standard ed. 
 p. 120. 
 
 * See article on Byron in the 9 th edition of the 'Encyclopedia 
 Brittanica', — also the Athenteum for 1876, IT, p. 306. 
 
 ^ Elze is of the opinion that Thyrza died in Oct. 1811. See the 
 3rd edition of his work p. 123. 
 
Those eyes proclaimed so pure a mind 
 Even passion l)]ushed to plead tor more." 
 
 Ill his letter to Dallas written on the same day that he 
 composed the above verses, Byron writes, — ''I have been again 
 shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me 
 in happier times ; but 'I have almost forgot the taste of 
 grief, and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, 
 nor have 1 a tear left for an event which, five years ago, 
 would have bowed down my head to the earth;' ^ '"Five years 
 ago' would have been in 1806, when under the influence of 
 the 'pure love and passion'. Dallas replies, — -1 thank you 
 for your confidential communication at the bottom of the 
 stanza {stanza 9, canto 2, of 'Childe Harold' — This stanza 
 does not refer to Eddlestone'^ as the note in Murrays 1864 ed. 
 of Byron^s ivorks has it.) which so much delighted me. How 
 truly do I wish that the being to whom that verse now be- 
 longs had lived, and lived yours ! What your obligations 
 to her would have been in that case is inconceivable.''^ 
 Dallas who was related to the Byron family by marriage, 
 was not the man to recommend the girl in boy's clothing to 
 the chief of the house as a suitable spouse. Moreover 
 'Thyrza' was dead before Byron's return to ilngland in July 
 1811, but he was not aware of the fact till the lltli of the 
 following October, 
 
 "And oft I thought at Cynthia's noon, 
 When sailing o'er the .Egean wave, 
 "Now Thyrza gazes on that moon''— 
 Alas, it gleamed upon her gravel" 
 
 whereas the girl in boy's clothing was alive and seen 
 
 * 'Moore's Life' etc., letter 71. 
 
 2 Tozer in his edition of Childe Harold makes the same mistake. 
 — 'Childe Harold' edited with introduction and notes by H. F. Tozer, 
 M. A., second edition, Oxford, 1888. See Dallas , 'Recollections of the 
 Life of Lord Byron'. London, 1824, p. 148. 
 
 •^ R. C. Dallas , 'Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron'. London, 
 1824, p. 147. 
 
by Dallass in 1812. after the publicatiou of the first two 
 cantos of 'Childe Harold'. ^ 
 
 That Tliyvza was not Eddlestone, as the author of an 
 article written for the 'Athenseunr of July 5tli 1884 surmised 
 is self-evident. Why should Byron have written of her as 
 of a female to Dallas and in his poems, had the individual 
 in liis mind been a male? Jeaiireson's supposition, the hint 
 of which he probably got from Trelawuy, - who knew nothing 
 about the matter, that Margaret Parkin', the poet's cousin, 
 who died a year or two after Byron saw her tor the last 
 time in 1800, and to whose memory the feeble elegy in the 
 'Hours of Idleness' w^as written in 1832, was "the chief, if 
 not the only inspiring force of the 'Poems to Tliyrza'," ^ is 
 certainly, as Bleibtreu^ maintains, absurd to anyone w^ho 
 has read the poems in question. Bleibtreu ' follows Minto's 
 example and believes 'Thyrza and the girl in page's clothing 
 to be identical. ^' 
 
 Who 'Tliyrza' was, is not, and will probably never be 
 known, unless the publication of the Hobhouse papers, those 
 of Hobhouse's eldest daughter Lady Dorchester, or Byron's 
 letters from Italy, which were seen by the author of the 
 
 1 Dallas' 'Recollections' pp. 147, 48. 
 
 - Trelawny's 'Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron'. 
 London, 1858, p. 197. 
 
 ^ The Real Lord Byron, standard ed. p 75. 
 
 •* Cieschichte der Englischen Litteratur iui Neunzehnten Jahrhundert 
 von Karl Bleibtreu, 2te Auflage, p. 232 and fol. 
 
 •"' Geschichte der Englischen Litteratur im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert 
 p. 244. 
 
 ^'' Nanny Smith an old servant of Newstead Abbey said to Wash- 
 ington Irving as regards the boy in girl's clothing: "Once, it is true 
 he had a beautiful boy as a page, which the house-maids said was a 
 girl. * * *. The house-maids however, were very jealous, one of 
 them in particular took the matter in great dudgeon. Her name was 
 Lucy, she was a great favourite with Lord Byron ; and had been much 
 noticed by him, and began to have high notions " See Washington 
 Irving's Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, London 1850, p. 77. 
 
articles in the 'Quarterly Review' in 1869 and 1870, ^ clear 
 up the matter. The only existing ciue to the identity of 
 'Thyrza' to be found in the materials for investigation, which, 
 up to the present date, are at the disposal of a student ot 
 Byron's life, is, tliat 'Thyrza' probably inspired the 'pure love 
 and passion' in 1806. That she was neither Eddlestone, 
 Margaret Parker, nor the girl in boy's clothing, it seems 
 unnecessary to repeat. 
 
 II. 
 
 On the Probability of Byron's having had an illegitimate 
 Child before the Birth of 'Allegra'. 
 
 If the stanzas ^To my Son' - and the date affixed [1870] 
 be founded on fact, which their simple and heartfelt character, 
 
 ' 'Quarterly Review' for January 1«70, p. 228 Extract.— ''From 
 bis {Byron's) leaving England till his death, the sister was tbe reco- 
 gnised medium ot communication between him and his wife ; and all his 
 letters to his sister, no matter what their character, appear to have 
 been regularly submitted to Lady Byron, who took copies of them. It does 
 not appear that this was done with his knowledge. He wrote not less than 
 twice a month on an average ; and, with passing intervals of irritation 
 and do'^pondency rattled on in much the same manner as in his published 
 letters to his friends. He mentions in more guarded language, his prin- 
 cipal liasons, especially that which yave birth to 'Allegra', and the first 
 which seriously occupied him at Venice ; and his account of his first 
 meeting with the Countess Guiccioli is as glowing as if it was v/ritten 
 for an unconcerned reader. The general tone towards Lady Byron is 
 kind and even affectionate. It is only when the galling consequences 
 of the separation, his exile and shirred name come back upon him that 
 he breaks out." 
 
 ~ Murray's 1 vol. ed, of Byron's poetical works. London, 18ii4, 
 p. 537. Bp-on writes to Moore on January 5th iSlfi (-Moores' Life' etc., 
 letter 232): ''I would gladly— or, rather, sorrowfully comply with your 
 request of a dirge for the poor girl you mention. But how can I write 
 
 on one I have never seen or known? I could not wi-ite upon 
 
 any thing, without some personal experience and foundation. 
 
— 6 — 
 
 besides a passage iu the 12tli and one in the 16tli canto of 
 *Don JuauV 
 
 •'There was a country girl in a close cap 
 And scarlet cloak (I hate the sight to see, since — 
 Since — since — in youth, I had the sad mishap — 
 But luckily I have paid few parish fees since) : 
 That scarlet cloak, alas! alas unclosed with rigour, 
 Presents the problem of a double figure." 
 
 "A reel within a bottle is a mystery. 
 One can't tell how it e'er got in or out; 
 Therefore the present piece of natural history 
 I leave to those who are fond of solving doubt; 
 And merely state, though not for the consistory 
 Lord Henry was a justice, and that Scout 
 The constable beneath a warrant's banner 
 Had bagged this poacher upon Nature's manor." 
 
 several passages in the poet's letters to his mother,^ 
 and two passages in letters written to Moore ^ seem to 
 vouchsafe, Byron was a father in his twentieth year, some 
 months, possibly not a year, after the first glow of his 
 passion for 'Thyrza'. * He writes to Moore from Venice on 
 February 2nd 1818. **I know how to feel with you, because 
 (selfishness being always the substratum of our damnable 
 clay) I am quite wrapt up in my own children. Besides my 
 little legitimate, I have made unto myself an ?71egimate since 
 (to say nothing of one before).''^ 
 
 Now either the poem 'To my Son' must be altogether 
 fictitious, or Medora Leigh cannot have been Lord Byron's 
 child, or Byron must have written Moore that he had had 
 one illegitimate child before the birth of Mllegra", whereas 
 
 ' Canto 16, stanzas 61. 62,— see also canto 12, stanzas 17, 18. 
 ^ 'Moore's Life' etc., letters 45. 52. 
 3 -Moore's Life' etc , letters 137, 307. 
 
 •* The mother of this child he calls Helen, and writes of her as 
 dead in 1807. See verses 'To my Son'. 
 •'' 'Moore's Life' etc., letter 307. 
 
in fact, he had had two, — a very unlikely thing for a man 
 of Byron's temperament to do, who from his fondness for 
 describing himself as romantically naughty, would have 
 been more inclined to increase than diminish the number. It 
 will appear to those who consider what Charles Mackay 
 wrote in the preface to his book on Medora Leigh, ^ after 
 carefully studying the documents in his possession (that she, 
 Medora Leigh, 'was the undoubted daughter of Lord Byron's 
 sister') and who knows the utter absurdity of the Beecher 
 Stowe scandal, that this girl, whoever she may have been, 
 was no child of Lord Byron, although Bleibtreu^ considers 
 it certain that she was. 
 
 Bleibtreu " gives as one of his reasons for considering 
 Medora Leigh as a child of Byron, the peculiarity of her 
 name. What could be more natural for Mrs. Leigh, than to 
 christen her child 'Medora', after the beloved of the 'Corsair' 
 of the same name, out of honour to her brother, whose poem 
 'The Corsair', which had so prodigious a success, was published 
 in the beginning of 1815? Medora Leigh, according to 
 her own statement, was born in 1814.^ That Lady Byron 
 told this unfortunate girl in 1840 at Fontainebleau, that 
 Lord Byron had been her father, '"" cannot by any means be 
 taken as fact without any further evidence, when one con- 
 siders how Lady Byron hated Mrs. Leigh ever since they 
 quarreled in 1829, and with what utter disregard for trutli 
 she slandered her dead husband's half-sister in her latter 
 days. 
 
 Two passages in Byron's unpublished letters to his 
 half-sister, written just before leaving England in 1816, show 
 
 1 -Medora Leigh: A History and an Autobiography'. London 1869; p. 6. 
 
 2 Bleibtreu : 'Geschichte der Englischcn Litteratur im Neunzehnten 
 Jahrhundert', 2nd ed. p. 227. 
 
 •^ Geschichte der Englischen Litteratur ini lOten Jahrhundert, 2nd 
 ed. p. 245. 
 
 * 'Medora Leigh', p. 91. 
 
 ^ 'Medora Leigh', pp. 135, 36. 
 
— 8 -^ 
 
 that he possessed a strong interest in Medora Leigh. He 
 writes Mrs. Leigh on the 15tli of April 1816,— "Tell me 
 how is Georgey and Do [ahhreviat'on for Medora]^ — and on 
 April 22"d 1816, three days before leaving England, — "Of 
 the child you will inform me and write about poor dear 
 little Dor' 
 
 Mrs. Leigh wrote to Hodgson on March 18tli 1815'^ (3) 
 — "If I may give you mine \oinnion'\ it is, that in his 
 [Byron's] own mind , there were and are recollections fatal 
 to his peace, and which would have prevented his being 
 happy with any woman whose excellence equalled or approached 
 that of Lady B., from the consciousness of being unworthy 
 of it." 
 
 What these 'recollections fatal to his peace' were, is 
 known, if known at all, to but few individuals. At any 
 rate, Bleibtreu, according to Mrs. Leigh's testimony, was 
 probably correct in stating that Byron had substantial reasons 
 for his melancholy, and for writing the self-accusatory passages 
 in Manfred, whicli made Goethe think that Byron had com- 
 mitted a murder.^ 
 
 One of these passages, 
 
 "Man. I loved her and destroyed her! 
 
 Witch. Witfi thy hand? 
 
 ]\r;in. Not with my hand but heart— which broke her heart — 
 
 it gazed on mine and withered. I have shed 
 
 lilood, but not hers — and yet her blood was shed — 
 
 I saw— and could not staunch it " 
 
 Makes one involuntarily recall the fate Avhich tlie second 
 Mrs. Shelley so nearly underwent on the ]6tli of June 1822 
 
 ' Add. MS. 31 037 pp. 35,37 British Museum. 
 
 - Probably falsely dated 1815 instead of 181fi. 'Athen:oum' Sep- 
 tember lytli 1885. 
 
 ^ Bleibtreu: 'Englische Litteraturgeschichto im 19. Jahrhundert.' 
 2nd ed. p. 191. 
 
— 9 — 
 
 at San Terenzo.^ This passage to judge from that immediately 
 
 preceediiig, 
 
 "Man. She was like me in lineaments— her eyes 
 Her hair, her features, all, to the very tone 
 Even of her voice, they said were like to mine." 
 
 Probably refers to 'brother Gordon' the 'girl in boy's 
 clothing', whose face so much ressembled Byron's, as Minto 
 lirst suggested in the Athenaeum in 1876,- and whose sudden 
 disappearance from the field of Eyrouic biography after 
 Dallas- saw her in the spring of 1812, is such a mystery. 
 
 III. 
 
 Some Remarks on the Article in *riie Edinburgh Review' 
 on ^flours of Idleness'. 
 
 That the 'Edinburgh Review' article on 'Hours of Idleness' 
 was not published in January 1808, as Jeaifreson has it,** is 
 evident from Byron's letter to Beecher,'^ dated February 26th 
 180S, in which he writes, — "lam of so much importance 
 that a most violent attack is preparing for me in the next 
 number of the 'Edinburgh Review'. This I had from the 
 authority of a friend who has seen the proof and manuscript 
 of the critique." 
 
 The general opinion is that Brougham wrote the article. 
 James Henry Dixon in 'Notes and Queries' for December 
 8th 1870, writes, — "It is beyond all dispute that the Late 
 Lord Brougham did write the famous article in 'The Edin- 
 burgh Review'," — he also mentions a Paris edition of Byron's 
 works edited by Gait, in which a dictum of Brougham's is 
 
 1 Dowclen's 'Life of Shelley' vol 2, p. 514, — or Jeaftreson's 'The 
 Real Shelley' vol 2, p. 439. 
 
 ■^ 'Athemcum' 1876, II, p. 80G. 
 
 ^ Dallas' 'Recollections' pp. 24^, 49. 
 
 * 'The Real Lord Byron' standard ed. p. 97. 
 
 5 .'Moore's Life' etc , letter 24. 
 
-- 10 — 
 
 quoted to the effect, that there 'was not one word in that 
 review of which he (Brougham) was ashamed.' 'Notes and 
 Queries' for October 29tli 1870, quotes 'The Mirror' of July 
 2th 1830, as follows: 'It may not be generally known that 
 the present Lord Chancellor Brougham is the real author of 
 the famous article in 'The Edinburgh Review' on Byron's 
 juvenile production, 'Hours of Idleness' . . . We have this fact 
 from authority on which we can place the utmost reliance.' 
 Eogers^ quotes Byron as having said in Italy, "on being 
 at last assured that the celebrated critique on his early 
 poems in *The Edinburgh Review' was by Lord Brougham, 
 — Tf ever I return to England Brougham shall hear from 
 me"."- 
 
 That the 'impulse of the blow' came from Cambridge, 
 as Jeaffreson keenly observes,^ seems highly probable. What 
 besides anger caused by the impertinent and ungentlemanly 
 satire in 'Hours of Idleness' on the officials of the Cambridge 
 university, could have occasioned such severity on the part 
 of the reviewer. Had Brougham, who, since 1804, was resident 
 in London, been a witness of Byron's wild life in town in 
 the early months of 1808; or had Brougham an intimate 
 friend, or friends, amongst the Cambridge university officials 
 of that time? Or was the boyish egotism in some of the 
 poems and in the preface to 'Hours of Idleness', alone 
 responsible for the severity of the article?^ 
 
 1 'The Table Talk of Samuel Rogers.' London 1856, p. 234. 
 
 2 See also the Countess Guiccioli's work 'Lord Byron juge par les 
 Temcins de sa vie.' Paris, 1869, vol I, p. 84. 
 
 3 'The Real Lord Byron', standard ed. p. IOC). 
 
 '* According to Trelawny, Byron said to him on board 'The Her- 
 cules', that he, Byron, had 'reduced his hates to two, that venomons 
 reptile Brougham and Southey the apostate'. Trelawny's 'Records of 
 Shelley, Byron and the Author'. London 1887, p. '205. 
 
— 11 — 
 
 IV. 
 Diverse minor points. 
 
 That Byron had other reasons than the annoyance caused 
 him by creditors, for leaving' England with Hobhouse in the 
 early summer of 1809, he himself definately states in a letter 
 to his sollicitor Hanson. In this letter written at Newstead 
 Abbey, and dated April 16, 1809, he writes,— "If the con- 
 sequences of my leaving England were ten times as ruinous 
 as you describe, I have no alternative, there are circumstances 
 which render it absolutely indispensable, and quit the country 
 I must immediately".^ 
 
 Gait- attributed Byron's frequent scowling at Gibraltar 
 to recollections of some 'unpleasant reminiscence', and describes 
 the young man's behavior on board the Mediterranean packet, 
 as 'suggesting dim reminiscences of him who shot the albatros,' 
 in Coleridge's poem 'The Ancient Mariner'. Hobhouse, his 
 travelling companion at that time, said to Moore on the 
 28tli of April 1822 , some five months before he visited 
 Byron for the last time. "I know more of Byron than anyone 
 else, and much more than I should wish anybody else to 
 know". •'* This remark of Hobhouse , one might think with 
 propriety to refer to this period of his friend's career. There 
 were others who saw more of the poet, from the summer of 
 1811 when he returned from Greece till he left his native 
 country for good, in the spring of 1816. That Hobhouse 
 was in complete ignorance of many of the most important 
 incidents of Byron's life in Italy, is amply proved by that 
 portion of his article in the 'Westminster Review' which 
 
 1 Egerton MS. 2611, p. 113, British Museum. 
 
 2 Gait's 'Life of Byron'. London, 18.30, p. 63. 
 
 3 'Memoirs_, Correspondence and Journal of Thomas Moore' edited 
 by Lord John Russell. London. 1853. vol 3, p. 347. 
 
— 12 — 
 
 treats of Med win's book. ^ Of course in his remark to Moore, 
 Hobhouse maj' have referred to his friends life as a whole, 
 but there was no period of it with which he was more 
 familiar than from the fall of 1807, when he and Byron first 
 became friends, till thej' parted in the summer of 1810. 
 
 Jeaifreson writes as regards ^The Giaour', — "It is still 
 to be shown that the poem was based on one of the poet's 
 adventures in Greece."- Hobhouse, the author of the article 
 on Medwin and Dallas in the 'Westminster Keview' for 
 Januar}' 1825,^ writes, — "The girl whose life Lord Bja^on 
 saved at Athens, was not an object of his lordship's attach- 
 ment — but that of his lordship's Turkish servant."^ Byron 
 corresponded with Hobhouse from Greece after his friend 
 left him for England, and was also no doubt abundantly 
 communicative to the companion of the first year of his travels 
 with regard to the experiences of his second year abroad, 
 after his return to England. That Byron wrote Hobhouse 
 about one of the incidents which afterwards gave rise to 
 'The Corsair', may be ascertained by iionsulting Hobhouses 
 letter of April 23id 1811 to Hanson, from Dover. ^^ 
 
 ^ 'Jjurnal of the Conversations of Lord Byron at Pisa'; by Thomas 
 Medwin. London, 1824. 
 
 - 'The Real Lord Byron', standard ed. p. 170. 
 
 3 For proof of Hobhouse having been the author of this article, 
 see his letters to Mrs. Leigh. Add. MS. HI 037, British Museum. 
 
 * 'Westminster Review' for January 1825. 
 
 <^ Egerton MS. 2611, p. 231, British Museum. 
 
 ^' Trelawny makes Byron say: 'There is a rocky islet oif Maina— 
 it is the pirates Isle: it suggested tie "Corsair". No one knows it III 
 show you the spot on the way to the Moiea. There is the spot I should 
 like my bones to be.' See Trelawny's Records 3rd ed. 1887. 
 
13 — 
 
 V. 
 
 Some new Views regarding the Separation of Lord and 
 
 Lady Byron. 
 
 For those who would understand what, under certain 
 aspects, was the character of the young man whose hand 
 Miss Milbanke accepted in the autumn of 1814, and married 
 in the following- January; it is necessary, at least, to glance 
 rapidly over the sort of preliminary schooling for conjugal 
 felicity, which Byron underwent from shortly after the publi- 
 cation of the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold' till he made 
 his second proposal to his future wife in September 1814, 
 and to consider how those 'dispositions' were developed, which 
 Lady Byron, after determining never again to live under 
 the same roof with her husband in Januajy 1816, considered 
 as so 'anti-domestic' that she 'hoped to be remembered' by 
 him 'only as a burden'.^ 
 
 It is a well known fact that the English 'higher classes' 
 of the early years of the present century were exceedingly 
 profligate — profligate to an extent not to be readily conceived 
 by the English of to day, and that Byron was certainly one 
 of the most reckless libertines of his time, till he sobered 
 down to an orderly and quiet life after his Venetian ex- 
 cesses. 
 
 Before coming of age, Byron had been thoroughly initiated 
 into various kinds of dissipation at Cambridge, and though 
 he may have been putting it rather strong when he wrote 
 to Dallas in January 1808,— "I have been held up as the 
 votary of licentiousness and the disciple of infidelity," ^ yet 
 there are no sulficient reasons for thinking as Moore did. 
 
 1 See Lady Byron's letter of January 26tii 1816 to Mrs. Leigh,— 
 No. 13 in tlie appendix to the standard edition of 'The Real Lord 
 13yron',— also to be found in 'The Athenieum' for August 18tli 1883. 
 
 ■- 'Moore's Life etc.', letter 20. 
 
— 14 — 
 
 that his letters to Miss Pigot make a 'display and boast of 
 rakishnessV and that the young peer did not intend them 
 as unvarnished chronicles of his doings. 
 
 From the day of his arrival in England from Greece 
 in July 1811, till the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold' 
 were published on February 29^^ 1812, Byron was sufficiently 
 busy to be out of mischief with revising his poetry, 
 composing new stanzas, transacting business with Hanson 
 and composing his maiden speech for the House of Lords; 
 but hardly two months had passed since the two cantos 
 appeared, than the long list of his scrapes with women and 
 dissipations recommences. '^ 
 
 On August 22nfl 1813 about one year and four months 
 after this first scrape as recorded in his short letters of this 
 period to Moore, he writes to the same correspondent, — 
 "I am in a far more serious, and entirely new scrape than 
 any of the last twelve months, — and that is saying a good 
 deal. It is unlucky we can neither live with or without 
 these women." ^ In his journal for November 17 th of the 
 same year, he writes, — "Not a word from * * Have they 
 set out from *,*? or has my last precious epistle fallen 
 into the lion's jaws ? If so — and this silence looks 
 suspicious — I must clap on my 'musty morion' and 'hold out 
 my iron' — I am out of practice — but I won't begin again 
 at Manton's now. Besides, I would not return his shot. I 
 was once a famous wafer - splitter ; but then the bullies of 
 society made it necessary. Ever since I began to feel I had 
 a bad cause to support, I have left off the exercise." ^ On 
 April 9 th 1814 he writes to Moore, — that he has been 
 '^breaking a few of the favourite commandments" but that 
 he means to pull „up and marry" if anyone will have him.^ 
 
 * 'Moore's Life' etc., note to letter 18. 
 
 2 'Moore's Life' etc., p. 164. 
 
 3 'Moore's Life' etc., letter 133. 
 
 * 'Moore's Life' etc., p. 201 (one volume ed.). 
 5 'Moore's Life' etc., letter 173. 
 
— 15 — 
 
 Ou the 15tii of the following September the letter containing 
 his second proposal to Miss Milbanke was on its way to the 
 lady, on the 2^^\ of January 1815 they were married, and 
 but little more than a year had passed since their engage- 
 ment, than she had probably strong reasons for suspecting 
 him of infidelity. 
 
 Moore writes, — 'It is, at the same time, very far from 
 my intention to allege that, in the course of the noble poet's 
 intercourse with the theatre, he was not sometimes led into 
 a line of acquaintance and converse unbefitting, if not 
 dangerous to, the steadiness of married life. But the imputations 
 against him on this head were (as far as aff'ected, liis 
 conjugal character) not the less unfounded, — as the sole case 
 in which he aftorded anything like real grounds for an accu- 
 sation did not take place till after the period of the 
 separation.'" ^ 
 
 Moore was probably relying on the information lie 
 obtained from Byron's memoirs in making tliis assertion, but 
 it is doubtful if Byron positively knew of his wife's chief 
 reasons for repudiating him. Lady Byron persistently refused 
 to inform him of her principal grounds for action, with 
 which only the counsellors on both sides. Dr. Lushington 
 and Sir Samuel Romili}^, Mrs. Leigh, and the other individual 
 named in the -Quarterly Review' for January 1870 were 
 acquainted; and had sworn complete secrecy as regards her 
 chief motives for action to some interested person or persons, 
 unless the case should go into court. ^ 
 
 ^ 'Moore's Life' etc, p. 297 (one volume ed.). 
 
 - See her statements in Campbell's article on Moore's Life of 
 Byron in -The New Monthly' 1830, I, p. 379. Extract : 'It is not true 
 that pecuniary embarrassments were the cause of the disturbed state of 
 Lord Byron's mintl, or formed the chief reason for the arrangements 
 made by him at that time {to go abroad?). But is it reasonable for me 
 to expect that you, or anyone else, should believe this, unless I show 
 what were the causes in question? and this I cannot do." 
 
 I am, &c. «tc, 
 E. (sic) Noel Byron. 
 3 
 
— 16 — 
 
 In the British Museum are preserved in one of the open 
 collections of Byronic writings, some verses in the handwriting 
 of Lady Byron entitled 'The Magpie V and bearing the post- 
 mark September 28th 1815,- in which the so-called committee 
 of 'mismanagement of Drury Lane Theatre is ridiculed as a 
 wliole, after which Byron comes in for his share as a 
 member: 
 
 '•Then there's Byron ashamed to appear like a Poef, 
 He talkes of finances for iear he should show it — 
 And makes all the envious Dandys despair; 
 By the cut of his shirt, and the curl of his hair?" 
 
 Under these verses Lady Byron wrote her husband's 
 half-sister, — "I have not got the others down get — I believe 
 B — will go to the Theatre to night but you seem to have 
 mistaken!— for the mischief has not lately taken place there but 
 after his ' return — when alone — I grow more unable to sit 
 up late." 3 
 
 In Byron's last letter to his wife before leaving Eng- 
 land/' he writes, — that when he made the will in favour of 
 Mrs. Leigh and her children (Jnhj 29^h 1815) he and his 
 wife "had not then diitVred," In Lady Byron's letter of 
 February 23i-tl 1816,"' to her husband, she wrote that she 
 had "warned him," before thinking him mad, "earnestly and 
 affectionately of the irreparable consequenses which must 
 issue" from his conduct both to himself and her — and that 
 "to those representations" he had replied "by a determination 
 to be wicked" though it should break her heart. She 
 continues, — "I cannot attribute your 'State of mind' to any 
 
 1 See Byron's letter of September 25tli 1815 to Murray as regards 
 this poem ('Moore's Life' etc., one volume ed. p. 285). 
 
 ■^ Add. MS. 31037, p. 21, liritish Museum. 
 
 a Add. MS. 31037, p. 21, British Museum. 
 
 ^ Letter No. 19 in the appendix to the standard edition of 'The 
 Real Lord Byron';- also in the 'Athonteum' for August 18<^1' 1883. 
 
 ■'' Letter No. 18 of the ajipendis to the standard edition of 'The 
 Real Lord Bvron'i— also in the Athenieum' for AuRust IS^^ 1883. 
 
— 17 — 
 
 cause so much as to the total dereliction of principle, which 
 since our marriage you have professed and gloried in'' On 
 what subject besides respect for marriage vows did Bj^ron 
 lack principle? Was he not an honest man according to 
 tlie 'code of honour' of the world of fashion of his day? 
 And yet Jeaffreson writes in his work on Byron, wliich, on 
 most points is teeming with sagacity and penetration, that — 
 "It is certain that Lady Byron and her husband separated 
 on account of reasons covered by the familiar and elastic 
 phrase 'incompatibility of temper'."^ Why is it certain? 
 Because Lady Lovelace thought so? Unless Jeaffreson can 
 publish documents to verify his assertion, it is of course 
 impossible to accept it as true in the face of so much 
 published evidence to the contrary. 
 
 VL 
 
 Byron's Relationship to Mary Jane Clairmont. 
 
 Whether Mary Jane Clairmont,- daughter of William 
 Godwin's second wife by a former husband and mother of 
 Byron's natural child 'AUegra', was the cause of the poet's 
 being led astray from the path of conjugal duty as early as 
 the lines written by his wife under the verses entitled 'The 
 Magpie' suggest, I am unable to decide, not having been 
 able to obtain sufficient information on the subject for any 
 positive conclusion. The substance of the lines written by 
 Lady Byron to Mrs. Leigh, agrees with the account which 
 a gentleman of literary eminence in London {who claims to 
 
 1 -The Real Lord Byron', standard edition, p. 188. 
 
 '- Generally called 'Claire' by Shelleyan and Peyronie biograpbers. 
 she was called 'Claire' by 8helley, by her sister-by-affinity Mary Godwin 
 (afterwards the second Mrs. Shelley), Leigh Hunt, Mrs. Hunt, and otlier 
 from the spring of 1814 on. By her mother, brother, lather-in-law and 
 Fanny Imlay she was invariably called 'Jane'. 
 
 3* 
 
— 18 — 
 
 to have had the f^tonj from an intimate friend of Byron ^ who 
 had obtained his informafion from the poet] gave me of the 
 manner in which Byron first became intimate with Miss 
 Clairmont. The second Mrs. Shelley however writes to 'Claire' 
 herself of the 'spring when she [Claire] became ac(iuainted 
 with Lord Byron ;^ and Medwin, Shelley's cousin, who might 
 well have obtained some information on the subject from 
 Shelley or Shelley's second wife, writes, — "She was not 
 altogether a stranger to Byron when they met at Secheron; 
 for as he was about to quit London for the continent in 
 the spring of that year [1816], after his mysterious repudiation 
 by Lady Byron, she had an interview with him for the pur- 
 pose of obtaining an engagement at Drury Lane ; but 
 
 which object, his recent resignation of office as chairman of 
 the committee of management, precluded him as he explained 
 to her from forwarding," - 
 
 Mrs. Marshall, in her well known Avork on Shelley's second 
 wife, writes — "Nothing in Clara's fClaire's] letters to him (Byron) 
 (which unfortunately may not be published) goes to prove that 
 she was very deeply in love with him." ^ That Claire was far 
 from having an affectionate remembrance of Byron after his 
 death, may be seen from one of her letters to Mrs. Shelle}^, 
 in which, in referring to the latter's novel 'Lodore' (puhJished 
 in ISyj')) she writes, — "Mrs. — admired 'Lodore amazingly, so 
 do I, or should I, if it Avere not for that modification of tlie 
 beastly character of Lord Byron of which you have composed 
 Lodore, *** Good God! to think a person of your genius, 
 whose moral tact ought to be proportionately exalted, should 
 think it a task befitting its powers, to gild and embellish 
 and pass off as beautiful what was the merest compound of 
 vanity, folly, and every miserable weakness that ever met 
 together in one human being! As I do not want to be severe 
 
 1 Dowden's 'Life of Shelley', vol. 2, p. 489. 
 - Medwin's Life of Shelley, vol. 1, p. 280 (London 1847). 
 ^ 'The Life and Letters of Mary WolLstonecraft Shelley', by Mrs. 
 Julian Marshall. London, 1889, vol. 1. p. 125. 
 
~ 19 — 
 
 on the poor man, because he is dead and cannot defend 
 himself, I have only taken the lighter defects of his character, 
 or else I might say that never was a nature more profoundly 
 coriaipt than his became, or more radically vulgar than liis 
 was from the very outset. Never was there an individual 
 less adapted, except perlmps Alcibiades, for being held up 
 as anything but an object of commiseration, or as an example 
 of how contemptible is even intellectual greatness when not 
 joined with moral greatness."^ 
 
 Byron certainly cared very little for this girl, Avhose 
 behaviour, to say the least, must have been very irritating 
 to a man of his temperament. With what outbursts of passion 
 she assailed him at Geneva, we are not informed, but to 
 judge from the few of her letters to him which have been 
 published, - and which are by no means as restrained as good 
 policy required, she must have overwhelmed him with sarcasm 
 when in anger in his presence. Possibly also the similarity 
 of lier name to that of the 'mischief maker' Mrs. Clermont,^ 
 whom Byron considered in February 1816, as -'very much 
 the occult cause of his domestic discrepancies,"^ and wliom 
 he poured his wrath upon in the verses called 'A Sketch', 
 influenced him to some degree in disliking Claire.'' 
 
 * 'The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley', vol. 2, 
 pp. 265, 66. 
 
 - Besides many of Claire's letters to Byron, those which Shelley 
 wrote him announcing the birth of Allegra and others in Ijehalf of the 
 child and mother, and Byron's letters in reply, if he wrote any, have 
 as yet not been published. 
 
 3 Mary Shelley spelt this woman's name 'Claremont', see her letter 
 to Trelawny, vol. 2, pp. 118, 19, 20; of Mrs. Marshall's work. 
 
 •* 'Moore's Life' etc., letter 233. 
 
 •"' Jeaftreson confounds Mrs. Clermont the 'Mischief-maker' and former 
 governess of Lady Byron whom he attacked in his poem called 'The 
 Sketch' with Mrs. Clairmont Godwin's second wife and mother of Claire. 
 He writes: ''Several motives are conceivable, any, one of which would 
 dispose the 'Mischief-maker' to find her former pupil to withhold the 
 information?-- from her father and mother. Care for Jane's welfare and 
 
— 20 -^ 
 
 Almost five years after Byron saw the last of her in 
 Aujjjiist 1816 at Geneva, she wrote him on the 24tli of March 
 1821 from Florence, — "How will Lady Byron, never yet 
 justified for her conduct towards you be soothed and rejoice 
 in the honourable safety of herself and child, and all the 
 world be bolder to praise her prudence, my unliappy Allegra 
 furnishing the (damning — left dearly legible) condemning 
 evidence." ^ 
 
 It is not necessary to possess much knowledge of Byron's 
 sensitiveness to all hostile criticism of his conduct, to picture 
 to oneself, into what a fury this passage in Claire's letter 
 must have set him. That he had no doubt received many 
 a sliai-p cut from 'Claire's' tongue previous to receiving this 
 letter, one may reasonably conjecture from his having expressed 
 to Hoppner, as Shelley wrote to his second wife from Venice 
 in August 1818, 'his extreme horror of her [Claire's] arrival, 
 and the necessity which it would impose on him of instantly 
 quitting Venice.' - 
 
 Shelley described Claire's character, after Allegra's death 
 in a letter to John Gisborne thus: "C — [Claire] is Avitli us, 
 and the death of her child seems to have restored her to 
 
 dread of her displeasure , concern for Jane's reputation and concern for 
 her own advantage, May have made Mrs. Clermont urgent with Lady 
 Byron to keep from every one but her lawyers a matter so discreditable 
 to the girl and her connections. The Mischief-makers natural preference 
 for secrecy may have been stimulated by regard for Godwin's feelings." 
 (Real Lord Byron, standard ed. p. 208.) Mrs. Clermont the 'Mischief- 
 maker', had nothing to do with either Godwin's second wife Mrs. Clair- 
 wont or with either Godwin or Claire. This is probably the single 
 mistake Jeaftreson writes of having discovered in his work on Byron in 
 the prefiico to his edition of 1884. If so, why did he not correct it? 
 
 » Egerton MS. 2332 B., British Museum. 
 
 - Dowdcn's 'Life of Shelley' vol. 2, p. 226. — Shelley in one of his 
 letters from Ravenna to his wife, dated Aug. lOtli 1821, wrote her in 
 refeiTing probably to Claire and Byron, — "He \Byro}i\ would like 
 Pisa were it not for * * * [Claire], Gunpowder and fire ought to be 
 kept at a respectable distance from each other". (H. Buxton For- 
 man's edition of 'Shelley's Prose Works', vol. 4, p. 217.) 
 
— 21 — 
 
 tranquillity. Her character is somewhat altered. She is 
 vivacious aud talkative; and though she teases me sometimes, 
 I like her.'" 
 
 Byron agreed to take care of their child, AUegra, in 
 the spring of 1818, on the 'sole condition' that, from the 
 day it left her, the mother entirely relinquished it, and never 
 saw it again.'- A few months later, when requested by 
 Claire through Shelley for permission to see her child; he 
 said according to Shelley. — 'Why Claire will be as unwilling 
 to part with her again as she is to be absent from her now, 
 and there will be a second renewal of affliction and a second 
 parting. But if you like, she shall go to Claire to Padua 
 for a Aveek; aud in fact, after all, I have no right over the 
 child. If Claire likes to take it, let her take it, I do not 
 say what most people would in that situation, that I will 
 refuse to provide for it, or abandon it, if she does this; but 
 she must surely be aware herself how very imprudent such 
 a measure would be."^ 
 
 Mrs. Shelley wiio went to see Byron's remains in Great 
 George Street, Westminster, questioned Byron's valet Fletcher 
 about the poet's death, and wrote to Trelawny on July 28tb 
 1824, that — "from a few words, Avhich he [Fletcher] had 
 imprudently let fall, it would seem that his Lord spoke of 
 Claire in his last moments, and of his wish to do somethinj^ 
 for her, at a time when his mind, vacillating between 
 consciousness and delirium, would not permit him to do 
 anything." * 
 
 ' 'P. B. Shelley's Prose Works', edited by Harry Buxton Forman. 
 London, 1880. vol. 4, p. 279. 
 
 - -The Ijite and Letters of Mary Wollstonccrat't Shelley', vol. L 
 p. 212. 
 
 ^ Dowden's "Life of Shelley' vol. 2, p. 22H. 
 
 ^ 'The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstoneeraft Shelley", vol. 2 
 pp. 118, 19, 20. 
 
— 22 
 
 YIL 
 
 Preliminary Arraiig:eiiients for the Meeting of Shelley, 
 3Iary Godwin, 5Iary Jane Clairniont and Lord Jiyron, at 
 Dejean's Hotel d'Angleterre at Secheron (near Geneva). 
 
 Those writers on Shelley who have used the 'Shelley 
 papers', have up to the present day, with but one exception, 
 persisted in representing- the meeting of Shelley. Claire, Mary 
 Godwin and Byron at Dejean's Hotel dAngleterre at Secheron 
 as accidental, or that Claire persuaded Shelley and Mary 
 Godwin to go to Geneva Avith her, without intorming them 
 of her liasmi with Byron. 
 
 Jeaffreson in 'The Real Lord Byron', wrote with reason, 
 that the circumstantial evidence, against this having been 
 the case, is 'overwhelming'.^ 
 
 It was not however till 1889, that Mrs. Julian Marshall 
 in her work on Shelley's second wife , writing with the 
 'Shelley papers' at her disposal, confessed that Shelley had 
 entertained the 'prospect of a possible companionship' with 
 Byron, before leaving England in the spring of 1816.- 
 
 Dowden, obtaining his information from an undated letter 
 of Miss Clairniont to Byron, maintains that on leaving Eng- 
 land Avith Shelley, Mary Godwin "did not so much as know 
 that Byron was acquainted with Miss Clairmont's narae,"'^ — 
 and in his introduction to his edition of Shelley's 'Poetic 
 Works', goes so far as to write that not only Mary Godwin 
 but also Shelley -'were in profound ignorance of Byron's 
 intrigue with Miss Clairmont, when they started from Eng- 
 land." » 
 
 ' 'The Real Lord Byron' standard ed p. 237. 
 
 - 'The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley' by Mrs. 
 Julian Marshall. London, 1889. vol. 1, pp. 128; 29. 
 
 ^ Dowden's 'Life of Shelley' vol. 2, p. 6. 
 
 * Dowden's edition of Shelley's -Poetic Works'. London, 1890, 
 Introduction p. 23 
 
— 23 — 
 
 If Prof. Dowden has conclusive documentary proof to 
 back up this most remarkable statement, nothing but the 
 publication of the same could possibly make thinking people 
 believe that Shelley required his mistress to journey in those 
 non railway days , Avith her infant boy , a little over three 
 months old,^ and Claire, (a companion that this lady, who 
 was destined to become the second Mrs. Shelley, was so 
 anxious to get rid of in the spring of the previous year- 
 to Geneva, Avithout telling her the Vhy and the wherefore' 
 of such most extraordinary doings. That Shelley however 
 knew of Claire's intimacy with Byron is indisputable. Shelley 
 was not the man to be foolish enough to think that Claire, 
 of whose "incapacity for the slightest degree of friendship" 
 {that is she wanted something more'^ he wrote in his journal 
 for October 14tli 1814, had fallen into a trance of platonic 
 affection for Byron, the most celebrated rake of his day; 
 neither was Shelley silly enough to think that Byron, whose 
 reputation on such matters was far from good, had fallen 
 into a sort of spiritual admiration for the girl, whom he, 
 Shelley, had converted to his oAvn ideas of 'free love'.' 
 
 According to Mrs. Marshall, Mary Godwin was probably 
 introduced to Byron in March 1816, "when Shelley and 
 Maiy Avere, for a short time staying up in town."^"^ It does 
 not seem at all probable, that if Mary GodAvin Avas able to 
 obtain an introduction to Byron, that Shelley Avho Avas living 
 openly and confessedly Avith her in terms of conjugal intimacy, 
 and had the entree into all houses and all societies where 
 
 1 Shelley's second child by Mary Godwin, born January 24tli 1816. 
 
 - See Dowdcn's 'Life of Shelley' vol. 1, p. .518. Mary Godwin wrote 
 to her future husband two months after returning from Geneva, — ''Give 
 me a garden and ahseiitia Claire, and I will thank my love for many 
 favours (Dowden's 'Life of Shelley' vol. 2, p. 62). 
 
 •^ See index to 'The Real Shelley' also 'The Real Shelley' vol. 2, 
 p. 254 and Dowden's 'Life of Shelley' vol. 1, p. 483. 
 
 * See 'The Real Shelley' vol. 2, p. 261. 
 
 ^ 'The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley' vol. 1, 
 p. 125. 
 
— 24 -- 
 
 she went, did not have the same opportunity of making 
 Byron's acquaintance , of which lie was so desirous. Indeed 
 it seems highly probable that the arrangements for meeting 
 at the hotel at Secheron were made by the three disciples 
 of 'free love" and the celebrated poet by word of month in 
 England. 
 
 VTTI. 
 Byron's Atfection for Teresa Gaiiiba Guiccioli. 
 
 It is impossible at this distant date, to form an altogether 
 accurate conception of Byron's attitude towards the countess 
 Guiccioli and his aifection for her. That his love for this 
 girl countess did not possess that gushing and romantic 
 fervour which Moore attributed to it, is certain; but neither 
 is it to be doubted that he retained a warm affection for 
 her to the last. 
 
 Shelley, with his knowledge of Claire's inability to retain 
 Byron's affection, had not known the countess many days, 
 when he wrote on the 22ncl of October 1821 to John Gisborne, 
 — "^La Guiccioli, Avho awaits him \Bijro}f] impatiently, is a 
 very pretty, sentimental, innocent Italian, who has sacriiiced 
 an immense fortune for the sake of Lord Byron , and who, 
 if I know anything of my friend, of her, and of human nature, 
 will hereafter have plenty of leisure and opportunity to 
 repent her rashness."^ 
 
 The American painter West Avrote Moore of Byron's 
 having said to him in the summer of 1822, — 'that he hoped 
 his connection with the Guiccioli would be for ever."- 
 
 Medwin in his 'Conversations with Lord Byron at Pisa'^^ 
 writes, — "Lord Byron is certainly very much attached to 
 her without being actually in love," — and in the same work, 
 
 ' Foniian's edition of Shclley'.s 'Prose Works", vol. 4, p. 243. 
 - 'Mooro's Lite' etc., ]i- 562. 
 3 l^ondon, 1824, p. 23. 
 
^ 25 — 
 
 referring to the day after Shelley's cremation , he writes, — 
 "The next morning he [Bf/nm] was perfectly recovered. 
 When I called, I found him sitting in the garden under the 
 shade of some orange trees with the Countess. They are now 
 always together, and he is become quite domestic. He calls 
 her Piccimua, and bestoAVs on her all the pretty diminutive 
 epithets that are so sweet in Italian. His kindness and 
 attention to the Guiccioli have been invariable. A three 
 years' constancy proves that he is not altogether so un- 
 manageable by a sensible woman as might be supposed."^ 
 
 The same author in a work called 'The Angler in 
 Wales','- writes, after describing Byron's horses, — "The pair 
 he lent the Guiccioli were better to look at than to go. 
 These we met with the fair Ravennese en route, and stopped 
 to hold a short parley with the Contessa. When she was 
 gone, he said, — 'I loved her for three weeks. What a red- 
 headed^ thing it is! I am much obliged to Lady Byron 
 because I cannot marry while she lives'."* In the same 
 work he describes Byron, just before the poet sailed for 
 
 1 'Journal of Conversations with Lord Byvon at Pisa', by Thomas 
 Medwin. London, 1824, p. 259. 
 
 -^ London, 1834, vol. 2, p. 182. 
 
 3 This supposed remark of Byron is very probably a forgery, as 
 West the American painter, who painted a portrait of the Contessa at 
 ]\[ontenero, in 1822, describes her hair as 'golden' (see Moore's Life etc., 
 one volume ct p. 562), as does also Leigh Hunt ('Lord Byron and some 
 of his Contemporaries'. Paris, 1828, vol. I, p. 67). Lady Blossington 
 writes of Byron's having described to her the Guiccioli's hair as 'auburn' 
 ('ConvGi'sations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington', second 
 edition p. 96). This lady had probably forgotten what Byron did say 
 to her, and obtained her information from Medwin's 'Conversations' 
 (p. 23) in which work this 'prince of blunderers' Modwin, describes the 
 colour of the same woman's hair as being of the darkest auburn, and 
 twenty — three years later in his 'Life ot Shelley' as bright auburn' (vol. 2, 
 pp. 140, 41). JeaflVeson writing from personal experience, having examined 
 her hair, declares it absolutely golden ('The Real Lord Byron' standard 
 ed. p. 285). 
 
 4 'The Angler in Wales', London, 1834, vol. 2, p. 182. 
 
— 26 — 
 
 Greece, as "very uncomfortable" and tired of tlie Tontessa."^ 
 Consul-General Hoppner, Byron's friend and confidant at 
 Venice, ^vrote to the 'Atlienivum' for May 22"^! 1869,— 
 "Lady R—[HoUand?] who saw Lord Byron frequently at 
 Genoa, and also Mine. Guiccioli, assured me she was con- 
 vinced he went to Greece to yet away from her." 
 
 According to Lady Blessington's 'Journal of C'onversations 
 of Lord Byron',"- Byron made the remark in Genoa, sometime 
 after the first of April 1823 — 'Were the Contessa Guiccioli 
 and I married, we should, I am sure, be cited as an example 
 of conjugal happiness.' — and also, 
 
 "Oh! what are a thousand living loves 
 To that which cannot quit the death?" 
 
 'How did I feel this when Allegra, my daughter died! 
 AVliile she lived, her existence never seemed necessary to 
 my happiness ; but no sooner did I lose her than it appeared 
 to me as if I could not live Avithout her. Even now the 
 recollection is most bitter; but how much more severely 
 would the death of Teresa afflict me with the dreadful 
 consciousness that while I had been soaring into the realms 
 of romance and fancy, I had left her to weep over my 
 colduess or infidelities of imagination. It is a dreatful proof 
 of the weakness of our natures , that we cannot control 
 ourselves sufficiently to form the happiness of those we love, 
 or bear their loss without agony.' 
 
 Lady Blessington continues, — "The whole of this con- 
 versation made u deep impression on my mind, and the 
 countenance of the speaker full of earnestness and feeling, 
 impressed it still more strongly on my memory."'^ 
 
 In passing judgment on Byron's affection for the Countess 
 Guiccioli, it is well to remember, that when he fii'st met 
 
 ' 'The Angler in Wales', vol. 2, p. 198. 
 - Second edition, London, 1850, p. 116. 
 
 ^ 'Conversations of Lord Bvron with the Countess of Blessington'. 
 second edition pp. 72, 3. 
 
— 27 — 
 
 her, in the spring of 1819, Byron was no more the London 
 (Ia.nd)^-poet , still less the romantic and sentimental school- 
 boy who fell in love with Mary Anne (.■haworth; but the 
 author of the lirst two cantos of Don Juan, a keen reader 
 of human nature with an abundance of worldly wisdom foi" 
 his years. 
 
 That such a man would have been swayed by any 
 sentimental considerations such as Jeaflfreson thinks wouhl 
 have ruled his movements, had he been really in love with 
 the Countess, from installing her in his villa at La Mira, 
 namely: because he had lived there with Marianna Segati, 
 the linen-drapers wife etc.,^ does not seem at all probable. 
 Indeed it seems as if Jeaffreson, who was doubtless justified 
 in attacking Moore's gushing over the fervour of Byron's 
 attachment to the Countess, .had gone a little to far in the 
 opposite direction. 
 
 After considering how frequently Byron idealized Teresa 
 Guiccioli in poetic works, from the beginning of their liason 
 till he finished 'The Island' in February 1823,- besides his 
 frequent affectionate remarks to Lady Blessington concerning 
 her^ during the last few months of his stay in Genoa, just 
 previous to his departure for Greece, it seems as if the only 
 conclusion one is justified in*making, is that he loved her 
 as much as his worldly nature, irritable temper, ruined health 
 and shattered nerves permitted of his loving anyone. Had 
 this not been the case , Byron would not have given Col. 
 Stanhope to understand at Missolonghi, that he (Byron) 
 "preferred Italian Avomen to all others."^ 
 
 1 'The Real Lord Byron' standard ed. p. 298. 
 
 '^ See Bleibtreu's excellent analysis of Byron's Works in bis *Ge- 
 schichte der englischen Litteratur iiu neunzohnten Jalirhundert', second 
 edition, Leipzig, 1888. 
 
 3 'Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington', 
 second edition, pp. 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 91, 115, 116, 117, 196. 
 
 * See Col. Stanhope's -Sketch' of Lord Byron, printed in the 
 appendix to the English translation of Elze's Life of Byron, p. 493. 
 
— 28 — 
 
 The great poet's life from his entering Cambridge univer- 
 sity till he died in Greece , was composed , with but few 
 intervals of comparative calm, of a continued series of excite- 
 ments; such as he, Avho was constantly suffering the pangs 
 of hunger in his struggle against his tendency to fatten.^ 
 could not dispense with, without rendering existence unen- 
 durable. 
 
 There can be little doubt that this craving after excite- 
 ment had much to do, in common with the poet's hatred of 
 tyranny, in causing him to join the Italian Carbonari, and 
 afterwards to aid the Greeks in their struggle for indepen- 
 dence. Besides it rendered him unlit for enjoying the quiet 
 of the all but idyllic life he led with the Guiccioli at Genoa, 
 and caused him to remark to Captain Roberts, the builder 
 of his yacht 'The Bolivar', — "Well Captain, if we do not go 
 to Greece, I am determined to go somewhere, and hope we 
 shall all be at sea together by next month, as I am tired 
 of this place, the shore, and all the people on it."'- 
 
 Jeaffreson writes in enumerating the conclusions to be 
 drawn from the different reports of Byron's last moments, 
 that the poet "made no effort to send a message to Teresa 
 Guiccioli. Her name did not come to his lips."^ 
 
 This conclusion is by no means certain. All the reports 
 of Byron's death were made by uneducated Englishmen, with 
 the exception of the strictly medical ones. If Byron had 
 spoken of the Countess, it would most probably have been 
 in Italian , of Avhich language he was so perfect a master, 
 and which he spoke frequently when in delirium on his death 
 
 1 That Byron's tendency to obesity was by no means on the wane, 
 at least as late as the summer of 1822, may be seen by consulting 
 Leigh Hunt's work 'Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries', vol. 1, 
 pp. 115, 16. 
 
 - Trelawny's 'Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron.' 
 London, 1858, p. 161. 
 
 3 'The Real Lord Byron', standard ed. p. 412. 
 
— 29 — 
 
 bed.^ The uneducated Parry and Byron's valet Fletcher, 
 with tlieir incompetence to understand the signification of 
 whatsoever was said in any language but tlieir own, could 
 not have understood him had he said anything referring to 
 tlie Countess in one of his frequent attacks of delirium in 
 Italian. Besides there is no evidence whatever that Tita 
 (Byron's Venetian gondolier and afterwards his servant in 
 Italy and Greece), who was much Avitli the dying man, either 
 wrote an account, or gave any of those who did write on 
 the subject, information as regards what the poet said in 
 his hearing in Italian, during his last illness. - 
 
 Count Gamba, to whom Byron would have been more 
 inclined to converse with on any subject referring to that 
 gentleman's sister, than anj^one else, was not near Byron 
 but for a moment during the last days of the poet's life, 
 when he was unable to refrain from weeping at the sight 
 of his friend and was forced to leave the room to prevent 
 Byron's being affected by his display of emotion. 
 
 A part of the correspondence between the Countess 
 Guiccioli and Byron, which has not yet been published, will, 
 according to what the Countess (then Marquise de Boissj^) 
 said to an American lady, ■' be given to the world fifty years 
 after her death [1923].^ 
 
 ' See Count Gamba's 'Narrative of Lord Byron's last Journey to 
 Greece'. London, 1825, pp. 261, 264; — or 'The Last Days of Lord ]>yron' 
 by William Parry. London, 1825, p. 124. 
 
 - Possibly Count Gamba got his information of Byron's having 
 said ^Jo hascio qualche tosa di caro nel mondo' from Tita. See Gamba's 
 'NaiTative' p. 265. 
 
 3 See 'Victoria Magazine' for November 1873, p. 23. As regards 
 what appears to have been another portion of this correspondence, see 
 'Revue des Deux Mondes' pour le 15 Janvier 1882, p. 801. 
 
 ^ The Countess died in March 1873 at Florence. 
 
30 — 
 
 IX. 
 
 Preliminary Intercourse between Byron, Shelley and Leigh 
 
 Hunt as regards the editing of a projected Journal 
 
 afterwards called The Liberal'. 
 
 Byron first met Leigh Hunt in Horsemonger Lane Gaol, 
 whither he was accompanied by iVIoore, in May 1813/ and 
 from that period till Hunt's release from gaol, saw him there 
 on several occassions, treating him with great kindness and 
 making him presents of books and game. From the time of 
 Hunt's release from prison, in February 1815, till Byron left 
 England in April 1816, they saw but little of each other, 
 enough however to enable Byron to describe Hunt to Moore 
 in a letter written at Venice on June l^t 1818, as ''a great 
 coxcomb and a very vulgar person in everything about 
 him." ^ 
 
 Shelley, who had not yet made Leigh Hunt's acquaintance 
 when he left England on his way to meet Byron in the 
 spring of 1816, had Avritten him a letter of congratulation 
 as editor of the 'Examiner' from University C.^ollege, Oxford, 
 on the occasion of the brothers Hunt being declared "Not 
 guilty" of libel in March 1811. ^ 
 
 When the Hunt's were sentenced to two years imprisonment 
 in February 1813, Shelley wrote to the Old Bond Street 
 publisher Hookam, that he was ''boiling over with indignation 
 at the horrible injustice and tyranny of the sentence pronounced 
 
 1 Moore was mistaken in giving June 1813, as the date of this 
 meetincj. {'Moore's Life' etc. 1 vol. ed. p. 183); See Hunt's letter of May 
 25th 1813 to his wife in 'The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt' edited by 
 his eldest son Thornton Hunt. London, 1862. 
 
 ■^ 'Moore's Life' etc. letter 317. 
 
 3 Dowden's 'Life of Shelley' vol. 1, p. 113. 
 
— 31 — 
 
 on Hunt and his brother," and oftred to send twentj^ pounds 
 wherewith to begin a subscription in their behalf.^ 
 
 After returning from Geneva in the autumn of 1816, 
 Shelley called on Hunt, and their acquaintance had ripened 
 into friendship before the close of that year. The day after 
 Shelley heard of his iirst wife's suicide, on the 16 th of De- 
 cember 1816, he wrote to his mistress from London,— "Leigh 
 Hunt has been with me all day, and liis delicate and tender 
 attentions to me, and kind speeches of you, have sustained 
 me against the weight of the horror of this event." - 
 
 A passage in the second Mrs. Shelley's letter of October 
 5th 1817 to her husband, will serve to illustrate the 
 intimacy existing between the needy man of letters and the 
 baronet's son at that period. Mrs. Shelley writes, — ',1 have 
 written to Hunt; but tell him over and above, that our 
 piano is in tune, and that I wish he would come down by 
 Monday's coach to play me a few tunes. He will think I 
 jest, but it would really give me the greatest pleasure. 1 
 would make love to him /^mw- passer le temps, that he might 
 not regret the company of his Marianne [Mrs. Hunt] and 
 Thornton [Hunfs eldest son].^ 
 
 On March lltii 1818, Shelley, Shelley's second wife, 
 their two children, Claire, Allegra and the Swiss nurse Elise, 
 were on the road to Dover on their way to Italy, where 
 they intended having Allegra handed over to h^r father at 
 Venice, with Hunt's last volume of poetry in their keeping 
 as a present from the author to Byron. 
 
 Shelley had not been a fortnight absent from England 
 when he wrote to Hunt from Lyons, — "When shall T see 
 you again? Oh that it might be in Italy! I confess that 
 the thought of how long we may be divided makes me very 
 
 ' Dowden's 'Life of Shelley', vol. 1, pp. 824, 25. 
 -' Dowdeii's 'Life of Shelley\ vol. 2, p. 68. 
 3 Dowden's 'Life of Shelley', vol. 2, p. 148. 
 
— 32 - 
 
 melancholy." ^ Hunt replies an the 24tli of April of the 
 same year, — "When you write to Lord Byron, pray, 
 remember me particularly to him. Oh! for some of your 
 Italian sunsliine , to make a proper April with."- 
 
 As Byron had made a proposition to ]Moore of being 
 joint editor of a journal witli him, as early as January 
 1817,^ Shelley, who was no doubt duly affected by Hunt's 
 longing for Italian sunshine, had but little difficulty in persua- 
 ding Byron to invite Hunt to Italy. It is possible, though highly 
 improbable,^ that he did no more in 1818 than mention 
 Hunt's desire to come to Italy to Byron who, immediately invited 
 the author of Rimini to do so; probably with the same end 
 in view which he had in inviting him to come to Pisa three 
 years later. 
 
 Shelley wrote to his friend Peacock from Naples on De- 
 cember 22iitl 1818 — "You don't see much of Hunt. I wish 
 you could contrive to see him when you go up to town, and 
 ask him what he means to answer to Lord Byron's invitation. 
 He has now an opportunity of seeing Italy." •' 
 
 Although Hunt did not accept Byron's invitation in 1818, 
 Byron did not give up tlie idea of having some kind of 
 periodical publication under his control, and made a second 
 proposition to Moore on the same subject in December 1820.^' 
 
 In the autumn of 1820 Leigh Hunt became seriously ill, and 
 was obliged to discontinue work on the 'Examiner', his brother 
 John was in prison for writing of 'The House of Comons' as 'con- 
 sisting in the main of public criminals'. Leigh Hunt was at that 
 time the father of six children, and his wife in despair wrote to 
 Mrs. Shelley in January 1821, in referring to Byron, — ''Ask 
 
 ^ Forman's edition of Shelley's 'Prose Works', vol. 4, p. 4. 
 
 2 'Correspondence of Leigh Plunt'. London, 1862. vol. 1, p. 118. 
 
 3 'Moore's Life' etc., letter 259. 
 
 * See Jiyron's severely critical remarks on Hunt in his letter 
 to Moore of .Tune 1st 1818, ('Moore's Life' etc., letter 317). 
 
 ^ Forman's edition of Shelley's Prose Works', vol. 4, p. 70. 
 fi 'Moore's Life* etc., letter 403. 
 
— 33 — 
 
 M^- Shelley nuj dear Mrs. SheUctj to urge if to him Surely 
 
 we might sell all our furniture and come over to you." ^ 
 
 It seems certain that Byron did not send his first invitation to 
 Hunt in 1818 altogether of his own free will, and that he was in- 
 Huenced in so doing by Shelley ; as almost three months before 
 Shelley visited him at Venice, he Avrote to Moore on June 1st 1818, 
 in the same letter in which he describes Hunt as 'a very 
 vulgar person', of the same gentleman's last published volume 
 of poetry 'Foliage' thus: -"Of all the ineffable Centaurs that 
 were ever begotten by Self-love upon a Night -mare, 1 think 
 this monstrous Sagittary the most prodigious." - It is difficult 
 to conceive that even his tenderness for Hunt, who had taken 
 his part in the 'Examiner' at the time of his separation from 
 his wife, would have prompted Byron to select as a literary 
 partner, a man of whose ability he possessed so low an 
 opinion. 
 
 No doubt one of Shelley's reasons ^ for visiting Byron in 
 August 1811 at Ravenna, was to urge on the author of Don 
 Juan the project of having Hunt come to Italy for editorial 
 purposes: and though he wrote to Hunt shortly after his 
 return to Pisa, ''He [Bgron] proposes that you should come 
 and go shares with him and me, in a periodical work, to be 
 conducted here," ^ there can be but little doubt but that 
 Shelley had something to do with bringing Byron's journalistic 
 scheme back to the great poet's memory, besides being 
 altogether instrumental in Hunt's being chosen as his and 
 Byron's coadjutor for editing the journal. Possibly Shelley 
 went so far as to let Byron know that he was acting solely 
 in Hunt's behalf. This seems at least probable, judging from 
 
 ' Dowden's 'Life of Shelley', vol. 2, j). 4:39. 
 
 - 'Moore's Life' etc., 51cttcr 17. 
 
 •^ His other motive in travelling to Ravenna was to visit Allegra 
 at Bagna Cavallo for Claire's sake. 
 
 ^ Forman's edition of Shelleys 'Prose Works', vol. 4, p. 235; or 
 llunt's 'Correspondence' vol., 1, p. 170. 
 
— 34 — 
 
 Byron's letter of October Qtli 1822^ to Murray, hi which he 
 wrote to his publisher — ''They [the brothers Hunt] pressed me 
 to engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented.^ 
 
 Shelley, in writing to Hunt of Byron's proposition, made 
 the bait which was to bring the needy man of letters with 
 his invalid wife and six children^ to Italy, as tempting as 
 possible; he wrote — "There can be no doubt that the profits 
 of any scheme in which you and Lord Byron engage, must, 
 from various, yet cooperating reasons, be very great. As for 
 myself, I am, for the present, only a sort of link between 
 you and him, until you can know each other and effectuate 
 the arrangement; since (to intrust you with a secret which 
 for your sake I Avithhold from Lord Byron) nothing wotild 
 induce me to share in the profits,* and still less in the 
 borrowed splendour of such a partnership. You and he in 
 different manners would be equal, and would bring, in 
 different manners, but in the same proportion equal stocks of 
 reputation and success." ^ 
 
 Hunt, who, at that period of his life, was as vain as a 
 peacock, and 'in the affairs of this world a child V lost his 
 head in reading Shelley's letter and boiled over with pride, 
 hope and ambition. — "What?" — he wrote,— ''Are there not 
 
 * 'Moore's Life' etc., letter 504. 
 
 - Jcatfreson in 'Tlie Real Lord Byron' (standard edition, p. 359) 
 referring to the above letter and letter 509 ot 'Moore's Life' etc., 
 writes that in them "Byron talked wide of the truth without knowing 
 it" as regards his relationship with the Hunts in the affair of 'The 
 Liberal'. He is possibly acquainted with some as yet unpublished 
 information on the subject. 
 
 ^ Hunt was the father of six children when he left England for 
 Italy. His wife bore him a seventh child on the S^li of June 1823 at 
 Genoa. 
 
 * Hunt must have inferred from the above, that he would get 
 Shelley's share of the profits of the intended journal besides his own. 
 
 •"' Forman's edition of Shelley's 'Prose Works', vol. 4, p. 235. 
 ^' See Byron's letter to Murray of October 9tli 1822 ('Moore's Life' 
 etc., letter 504). 
 
- 35 — 
 
 three of us? And ought we not to have as much strength and 
 variety as possible? We will divide the world between us, 
 like the Triumvirate, and you shall be the sleeping partner, 
 if you will; only it shall be with a Cleopatra, and your 
 dreams shall be worth the giving of kingdoms." ^ 
 
 When Shelley influenced Eyron to invite the very man 
 to Italy, who on one occasion had drawn £ 1400 from his 
 [Shelley's] pocket in one haul , - to say nothing of 
 smaller sums, to prey on the author of 'Don Juan', he no 
 longer acted as Byron's friend, but from thence on the 
 relationship between the three men of letters, who were to 
 act as continental editors of the 'Liberal', was a matter of 
 Shelley and Hunt versus Byron. 
 
 The author of 'Don Juan', who, since 1819, had been 
 cultivating the 'good old-gentlemanly vice', avarice, and lost 
 his temper over the 'inflammation of his weekly bills', assumed 
 an attitude in his commercial dealings in his latter years, 
 almost diametrically opposite to that of Shelley,'^ who till 
 
 * Leigh Hunt's 'Correspodence', vol. I, p. 172. 
 
 ■^ See 'The Real Shelley', vol. 2, p. 407. 
 
 ^ The sharp contrast which existed between Byron's and Shelley's 
 manner of commercial dealing in 1822, may be best illustrated by 
 comparing their respective ways of treating Captain Roberts, the 
 extortionate builder of their yachts, "The Bolivar' and 'The Don Juan'. 
 Shelley wrote to Trelawny on May 16tli 1822, referring to his yacht 
 •The Don Jua.n', — ''If Robert's £ 50 grow into a £ 500, and his ten 
 days into months, I suppose I may expect that I am considerably in your 
 debt, * *. Whatever may be the result I have little reason and less 
 inclination to complain of my bargain. I wish you could express from 
 mo to Roberts, how excessively I am obliged to him for the time and 
 trouble he has expended for my advantage, and which I wish could be 
 as easily repaid as the money which I owe him, and which I wait your 
 orders for remitting" (Forman's edition of Shelley's 'Prose Works', vol. 
 4, p. 270). In a letter from Williams to Trelawny, published in 
 Trelawny 's 'Recollections' (first edition pp. Ill, 12j, Williams wrote, — 
 "Lord B's reception of Mrs. H. [Hunt] was, as S, {Shelley] tells me most 
 shameiul * *; but the way in which he received our friend Roberts, at 
 Duun's door, shall be described when we meet: — it must be acted." 
 
— 36 — 
 
 his death was a prey to every clever parasite who approached 
 him, and who no doubt thought that Byron should have 
 squandered his money on Hunt, who according to his own 
 statement had 'peculiar notions on the subject of money', 
 and thought the giver should be thankful to the receiver 
 foi- accepting a pecuniary donation.^ 
 
 One of the reasons which account for Byron's readiness 
 to accept Hunt as his literary partner, was the false 
 impression, under Avhich both he and Shelley laboured, that 
 Leigh Hunt was still joint-proprietor of the °Examiner'.- 
 
 Byron had not been long in Pisa when Shelley wrote 
 to Hunt, — ''What arrangements have you made about the 
 receipt of a regular income from the profits of the 'Examiner'? 
 You ought not to leave England without having the assurance 
 of an independence in this particular ; as many difficulties have 
 presented themselves to the plan imagined by Lord Byron, 
 which I depend upon you for getting rid of." ^ 
 
 On March 2n(l 1822, Shelley wrote to Hunt,— "He [Bijron] 
 renews his expressions of disregard for the opinions of those 
 who advised him against this alliance with you, and I 
 imagine it Avill be no very difficult task to execute that 
 which you have assigned me — to keep him in heart with the 
 project until your arrival, **=*=. No feelings of my own 
 shall injure or interfere with what is now nearest to them — 
 your interest, and I will take care to preserve the little 
 influence I may have over this Proteus in Avhom such strange 
 extremes are reconciled, until we meet.'" 
 
 It is evident from anothor passage in the same lettei*, 
 that Byron had become aware that it was Hunt's interest 
 and not that of the author of "Don Juan' that Shelley had 
 
 * 'Lord Byron and some of bis Contemporaries'. Paris, 1828. vol.1, 
 p. 32 
 
 - See Trelawny's 'Kocollections', first edition, p. 155. 
 
 ■^ Forman's edition of Slielley's 'Prose Work's, vol. 4, p. 2:52. 
 
 ■* Forman's edition of Slielley's Prose Works', vol. 4. pp. 258 
 59, 60. 
 
— 37 - 
 
 at heart, and had given Shelley to untei'stand that he, Byron, 
 was aware of the real state of things. Shelley writes to 
 Hunt,— ''Lord Byron shewed me your letter to him, wliich 
 arrired toith mine ^ yesterday. How shall I thank you for 
 your generous and delicate defence and explanation of my 
 motives. I fear no misinterpretation from you, and from 
 anyone else I despise and defy it." 
 
 While Shelley was at work at the task assigned 
 him by Hunt, keeping Byron 'in heart with the project' ot 
 the journal, praising Hunt's literary ability, and painting in 
 roseate hues the commercial soundness of t)ie newspaper 
 enterprise, Byron would no doubt make sarcastic remarks in 
 the 'Don Juan' style to the contrary etfect, so as to let his 
 associate poet see that it was not in his nature d'etre dupe 
 of a man his junior in years and experience. 
 
 That Byron must have annoyed Shelley considerably on 
 the subject of Hunt and the projected journal, will appear 
 from a letter of Shelley to John Gisborne, dated June 18th 
 1822, in which the advocate for the rich emptying tlieir 
 pockets on professional parasites wrote, — ''Hunt is not yet 
 arrived, but I expect him every day. I shall see little of 
 Lord Byron, nor shall I permit Hunt to form the intermediate 
 link between him and me. I detest all society — almost all, 
 at least — and Lord Byron is the nucleus of all that is 
 hateful and tiresome in it." ^ 
 
 The day after Shelley wrote the letter just quoted. 
 Hunt arrived in Genoa, and Shelley sent him the following 
 note from Lerici: "A thousand welcomes, my best friend, to 
 this divine country ; high mountains and seas no longer 
 divide those whose aifections are united."^ 
 
 Ten days after Hunt's arrival in Genoa, Shelley, who 
 in the preceeding August, was so exuberantly hopeful as 
 regards the projected newspapei", wrote to Horace Smith,— 
 
 ^ We have caused the italics to be inserted. 
 
 - Forinan's edition of Shelley's 'Prose Works', vol. 4, p. 279. 
 
 ^ Forman's edition of Shelley's 'Prose Works', vol. 4, p. 283. 
 
— 38 — 
 
 "Between ourselves, I greatly fear that this alliance will not 
 succeed; for I, who could never have been regarded as more 
 than the link of the two thunderbolts, cannot now consent 
 to be even that; and how long the alliance between the 
 wren and the eagle ^ ma}^ continue I will not prophecj^"- 
 
 Not a week after writing the above letter, but four 
 days before his death, on learning of the Gambas being banished 
 from Tuscany and of Byron's having declared his intention of 
 following their fortunes, Shelley wrote to his wife, — "But it 
 is the worse for poor Hunt, unless the present storm should 
 blow^ over. He places his whole dependence upon this 
 scheme of a journal, for which every arrangement has been 
 made, and arrived wdth no other remnant of his £ 400^ than 
 a debt of 60 crowns. Lord Byron must of course furnish 
 the requisite funds at present as I cannot, but he seems 
 inclined to depart without the necessary explanations and 
 arrangements due to such a situation as Hunt's. This in 
 spite of delicacy I must procure; he offers him the copyright 
 of the Vision of Judgment^ for his first number. This offer 
 if sincere, is more than enough to set up the journal, and it 
 sincere will set everything right." ^ 
 
 Hunt, who came to Italy puffed up with the vanity with 
 which Shelley's letter containing Byron's proposal had inspired 
 him, and his 'peculiar notions on the subject of money', 
 treated the great poet as if he were Byron's literary equal 
 and could be under no obligations to him whatever. The 
 
 1 This from the man who had written a few months previously to 
 Hunt, — "You and he [J5?/ro«] in different manners would be equal etc." 
 
 - Forman's edition of Shelley's 'Prose Works', vol. 4, p. 286. 
 
 •' Byron lent Shelley £ 200 for Hunt on Shelley's bond, besides 
 which Shelley sent Hunt on one occasion £ 150 out of his own slender 
 income of £ 1000 per annum. I am not aware from what source Hunt 
 obtained the remaining £ 50. 
 
 * Byron not only gave Hunt 'The Vision of Judgment' gratis, but 
 also the 'Letter to the Pjditor of my Grandmother's Review', 'Heaven and 
 Earth', his translation of the 'Morgante Maggiore', and 'The Blues'. 
 
 ■' Forman's edition of Shelley's 'Prose Works', vol. 4, p. 289. 
 
— 39 — 
 
 exact nature of Hunt's attitude towards J^yron may be best 
 described in the words of tlie needy journalist himself, who, 
 a quarter of a century after Byron's death, wrote in his 
 'Autobiography', — ''His [Bi/ron's] friends in England, who, after 
 what had lately taken place there in his instance, were 
 opposed naturally enough, to his opening new fields of 
 publicity, did what they could to prevent his taking a hearty 
 interest in the 'Liberal'; and I must confess, that I did not 
 mend the matter by my own inability to fall in cordially 
 with his ways, and by a certain jealousy of my position, 
 which prevented me, neither very wisely nor justly, from 
 manifesting the admiration due to his genius, and reading 
 the manuscripts he showed me with a becoming amount of 
 thanks and good words. I think he had a right to feel this 
 want of accord in a companion, whatever might be its value. 
 A dozen years later, reflection would have made me act very 
 differently." ^ 
 
 Byron wrote to Moore after it became evident to him 
 that 'The Liberal' would be a failure, — "Think a moment — 
 he [Leigh Hunt] is perhaps the vainest man on earth, at 
 least his friends say so pretty loudly; and if he were in 
 other circumstances, I might be tempted to take him down 
 a peg; but not now,— it would be cruel"; and again to the 
 same correspondent,— "I cannot describe to you the despairing 
 sensation of trying to do something for a man who seem^ 
 incapable or unwilling to do anything further for himself, 
 — at least to the purpose. It is like pulling a man out of 
 a river who directly throws himself in again. For the last 
 three or four years Shelley assisted and had once actually 
 extricated him. - I have since his demise, — and even before, 
 
 ^ 'The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt'. London, 1850, voL 2, 
 p. 176. 
 
 '•^ It would seem from the above, that Shelley had imprudently 
 informed Byron to what extent he had assisted Hunt financially, which 
 was no doubt tme ralson de plus for Byron's looking out that this king 
 of parasites got no more money out of his pocket than absolutely 
 necessary. 
 
— 40 - 
 
 — done what T could : but it is not in my power to make 
 this permanent." ^ 
 
 Anothor side of Byron's trials with Leigh Hunt and 
 family, besides the vanity and sycophancy of the journalist 
 and the downright rudeness of Mrs. Hunt, he himself 
 describes graphically in a letter written on October 6tli 1822 
 to Mrs. Shelley, as follows : '^I have a particular dislike of 
 anything of Shelley's being within the same walls with Mrs. 
 Hunt's children. They are dirtier and more mischievous than 
 Yahoos. What they can't destroy with their filth, they Avill with 
 their fingers * * *. Poor Hunt, with his six little blackguards, 
 are coming slowly up, as usual he turned back once — was 
 there ever such a Kraal out of the Hottentot country before"? -,^ 
 
 Hunt could not have begun to find any serious fault with 
 Byron's treatment of him, till a few days before immigration 
 from Pisa to Genoa [Sept 22nd or 23rd 1822], as he wrote 
 to Mr. and Mrs. Novello from Pisa on September 9th 1822, 
 —'•Lord Byron is very kind".^ As late as July 1823 \ Byron 
 set sail for Greece mi the 17^^^ of July 1823\ Mrs. Shelley 
 ^^rites of Byron "still keeping up an appearance of amity 
 with Hunt.""' 
 
 On the lOth of June 1823, Mrs. Shelley (the expenses 
 of whose return to England Lord Byron had promised to 
 defray) told Byron she was ready to return to her native 
 country, and in a letter just quoted '• wrote to Jane Williams 
 —"He \Byron\ chose to transact our negociation through 
 
 2 'The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley', vol.2, p. 46. 
 
 •^ Trelawny writes: "Hunt's theory and practice were that chihlren 
 should be unrestrained until they were of an age to be reasoned with. 
 See Trelawny's Records ed. of 1887, p. 117. 
 
 4 'Recollections of Writers' by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke. 
 London, 1878, p. 218. — Hunt also wrote to his wife's sister on July 20tli 
 1822, of Lord Byron's kindness — See 'Correspondence of Leigh Hunt', vol. 1, 
 p. 190. 
 
 •'• 'Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley', vol. 2, p. 80. 
 
 « Dated July 1823. 
 
— 41 — 
 
 Hunt, and gave such an air of unwillingnetss and sense of 
 the obligation he conferred, as at last provoked Hunt to say 
 that there was no obligation, since he owed me £ 1000;^ 
 also — ''You would laugh at his last letter to Hunt, when he 
 says concerning his connection with Shelley 'that he let 
 himself down to the level of the democrats'." - 
 
 Both Mrs. Shelley and Leigh Hunt wrote kindly of 
 Byron on hearing of his death. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley wrote, — "Can I forget his attentions and 
 consolations to me during my deepest misery? — Never!'' 
 
 '•Beauty sat on his countenance and power beamed from 
 his eye. His faults being, for the most part, weaknesses, 
 induced one readily to pardon them." 
 
 ''Albe'^ — the dear capricious, fascinating Albe— has left 
 this desert world."* 
 
 Hunt wrote, — "I could not help feeling emotion at the 
 neAvs of Lord B's death, strange as his conduct was. Poor 
 fellow ! he was the most spoilt of men ; and I do believe was 
 naturally good."' 
 
 But four years had passed since penning the above lines, 
 when Hunt published his base and vulgar work on Byron; 
 beyond all odds the most vile and lying book ever written 
 on a man of equal genius. 
 
 1 Probably referring to a bet of £ 1000 made by Byron to Shelley 
 that Sir Timothy Shelley would die before Lady Noel; — see Mcdwin's 
 'Lite of Shelley', vol. 2, p. 243. 
 
 - 'Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley', vol. 2, p. 80. 
 
 ^ Probably derived from L. B. (Lord Byron), or Albanian. 
 
 -* Mrs. Shelley's diary for May 15tli 1824, in 'The Life and Letters 
 of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley', vol. 2, p. 118. 
 
 ■' Leigh Hunt's 'Correspondence', vol. 1, p. 222. 
 
Vita. 
 
 On the 24tl3 of November, 1866, I was born in New 
 York City. I received my collegiate education at the Penn- 
 sylvania Military College Avhere I graduated in the summer 
 of 1885. In the autumn of 1887 I matriculated in Leipzig, 
 where during the last five years, with the exception of the 
 year 1890 and the closing months of 1889 when I soujourned 
 in Paris, I heard the lectures of Professors Wiilker, Adolf 
 Birch-Hirschfeld, Zarncke, Maurenbrecher, Biedermann, von 
 Balider, Marshall, Elster, and of Dr. Witkowski and Dr. 
 Fliigel. To all of these exellent teachers I am much indebted. 
 To Professor Wiilker especially, I desire to express my obligation 
 for valuable help and kind advice. 
 
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