concerning his green-room intimacies, and
particularly with respect to one beautiful actress, with whom, in
reality, he had hardly ever exchanged a single word, I have already
adverted; and the extreme confidence with which this tale was circulated
and believed affords no unfair specimen of the sort of evidence with
which the public, in all such fits of moral wrath, is satisfied. 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 affected his conjugal
character) not the less unfounded,--as the sole case in which he
afforded any thing like _real_ grounds for such an accusation did not
take place till _after_ the period of the separation.

Not content with such ordinary and tangible charges, the tongue of
rumour was emboldened to proceed still further; and, presuming upon the
mysterious silence maintained by one of the parties, ventured to throw
out dark hints and vague insinuations, of which the fancy of every
hearer was left to fill up the outline as he pleased. In consequence of
all this exaggeration, such an outcry was now raised against Lord Byron
as, in no case of private life, perhaps, was ever before witnessed; nor
had the whole amount of fame which he had gathered, in the course of the
last four years, much exceeded in proportion the reproach and obloquy
that were now, within the space of a few weeks, showered upon him. In
addition to the many who, no doubt, conscientiously believed and
reprobated what they had but too much right, whether viewing him as poet
or man of fashion, to consider credible excesses, there were also
actively on the alert that large class of persons who seem to hold
violence against the vices of others to be equivalent to virtue in
themselves, together with all those natural haters of success who,
having long sickened under the splendour of the _poet_, were now
enabled, in the guise of champions for innocence, to wreak their spite
on the _man_. In every various form of paragraph, pamphlet, and
caricature, both his character and person were held up to
odium[97];--hardly a voice was raised, or at least listened to, in his
behalf; and though a few faithful friends remained unshaken by his side,
the utter hopelessness of ste