s life that the work was principally devoted; while the
anecdotes, having reference to other parts of his career, not only
occupied a very disproportionate space in its pages, but were most of
them such as are found repeated in the various Journals and other MSS.
he left behind. The chief charm, indeed, of that narrative, was the
melancholy playfulness--melancholy, from the wounded feeling so visible
through its pleasantry--with which events unimportant and persons
uninteresting, in almost every respect but their connection with such a
man's destiny, were detailed and described in it. Frank, as usual,
throughout, in his avowal of his own errors, and generously just towards
her who was his fellow-sufferer in the strife, the impression his
recital left on the minds of all who perused it was, to say the least,
favourable to him;--though, upon the whole, leading to a persuasion,
which I have already intimated to be my own, that, neither in kind nor
degree, did the causes of disunion between the parties much differ from
those that loosen the links of most such marriages.

With respect to the details themselves, though all important in his own
eyes at the time, as being connected with the subject that superseded
most others in his thoughts, the interest they would possess for others,
now that their first zest as a subject of scandal is gone by, and the
greater number of the persons to whom they relate forgotten, would be
too slight to justify me in entering upon them more particularly, or
running the risk of any offence that might be inflicted by their
disclosure. As far as the character of the illustrious subject of these
pages is concerned, I feel that Time and Justice are doing far more in
its favour than could be effected by any such gossiping details. During
the lifetime of a man of genius, the world is but too much inclined to
judge of him rather by what he wants than by what he possesses, and even
where conscious, as in the present case, that his defects are among the
sources of his greatness, to require of him unreasonably the one without
the other. If Pope had not been splenetic and irritable, we should have
wanted his Satires; and an impetuous temperament, and passions untamed,
were indispensable to the conformation of a poet like Byron. It is by
posterity only that full justice is rendered to those who have paid
such hard penalties to reach it. The dross that had once hung about the
ore drops away, and the infirmiti