who
is seldom just as well from party spirit as from his desire of shining
in antithesis and high-sounding phrases:--

"At twenty-four he found himself on the highest pinnacle of literary
fame, along with Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and a crowd of other
distinguished writers. There is scarcely an instance in history of so
sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence. Every thing that could stimulate,
and every thing that could gratify the strongest propensities of our
nature, the gaze of a hundred drawing-rooms, the acclamation of the
whole nation, the applause of applauded men, the love of lovely
women,--all this world, and all the glory of it, were at once offered to
a youth to whom nature had given violent passions, and whom education
had never taught to control them. He lived as many men live who have no
similar excuse to plead for their faults. But his countrymen and
countrywomen would love and admire him. They were resolved to see in his
excesses only the flash and outbreak of that same fiery mind which
glowed in his poetry. He attacked religion; yet in religious circles his
name was mentioned with fondness, and in many religious publications his
works were censured with singular tenderness. He lampooned the prince
regent, yet he could not alienate the Tories. Every thing, it seemed,
was to be forgiven to youth, rank, and genius.[146]

"Then came the reaction. Society, capricious in its indignation as it
had been capricious in its fondness, flew into a rage with its froward
and petted darling. He had been worshiped with an irrational idolatry.
He was persecuted with an irrational fury. Much has been written about
those unhappy domestic occurrences which decided the fate of his life.
Yet nothing is, nothing ever was, positively known to the public but
this,--that he quarrelled with his lady, and that she refused to live
with him. There have been hints in abundance, and shrugs and shakings of
the head, and '_Well, well, we know_,' and '_We could if we would_,' and
'_If we list to speak_,' and '_There be that might an they list._' But
we are not aware that there is before the world, substantiated by
credible, or even by tangible evidence, a single fact indicating that
Lord Byron was _more to blame than any other man who is on bad terms
with his wife_."

And after having said how the persons consulted by Lady Byron, and who
had advised her to separate from her husband, formed their opinion
without hearing both par