nd; but this project
failed, from obstacles created by a friend who was to accompany him;
and, besides, the plague was then prevalent in the East; he was,
moreover, embarrassed with the difficulty of selling Newstead, and the
necessity of such a painful measure; all which circumstances united to
keep him in England. And a host of other irritating annoyances, the
work of irreconcilable enemies, who were jealous of his success and his
superiority, then fell upon him, as they could not fail to do; for his
sun had risen too brightly not to call forth noxious vapors.

After having passed a month away from London, he wrote in his
memoranda:--

"I see all the papers are in a sad commotion with those eight lines....
You have no conception of the ludicrous solemnity with which these two
stanzas have been treated, ... of the uproar the lines on the little
'Royalty's Weeping,' in 1812 (now republished) have occasioned. The
'Morning Post' gave notice of an intended motion in the House of my
brethren on the subject, and God knows what proceedings besides.... This
last piece of intelligence is, I presume, too laughable to be true,
etc., etc."[179]

The first blow to his popularity was now given; and soon the whole
nation rose up in arms against him. All jealousies, and all resentments
now ranged themselves under one hostile banner, distorting Lord Byron's
every word, calumniating his motives, making his most generous and noble
actions serve as pretexts for attack; reproaching him with having given
up enmities from base reasons (while he had done so in reality from
feelings of justice and gratitude), pretending[180] that he had pocketed
large sums for his poems, and rendering him responsible for the follies
women chose to commit about him. This war, breaking out against him like
an unexpected hurricane amid radiant sunshine, must naturally have
caused irritation. And if we add to it the embarrassment of his affairs,
the deplorable events in his opinion then going on in the world, the
fall of the great Napoleon, whom he admired, the invasion of France by
the Allied Powers, which he disapproved of, the policy pursued by his
country, and the evils endured by humanity--spectacles that always made
his heart bleed,--we may well understand how all these causes may have
given rise to some moments of misanthropy, such as are betrayed by a few
expressions in his journal; but it was a misanthropy that existed only
in words, a plant without ro