r, acting in the midst of circumstances
generally founded on reality.

In following out the intention of the author, and his want of respect
for truth, it is impossible not to ask ourselves why, while respecting
circumstances of such slight import as the preservation of the Christian
names of the mother and wife, he has not done the same for more
important accidents in the hero's life? Why, for instance, have
described his childhood as a painful time? Was not Lord Byron surrounded
with the tenderest cares while in Scotland? Had he been unhappy there,
would he have transmitted to us in such happy lines his remembrance of
the time which he spent in the North? Is it not in Scotland that his
heart was nursed with every affection, that his mind drank in the
essence of poetry? Why make his mother die when he was only twelve years
of age, since she died only on his return from Spain and from Greece,
that is, when he was twenty-two? Why make her die of grief at being
abandoned by him, in consequence of an imaginary scene which obliges her
to take refuge in the midst of a band of Bohemian travellers, when it is
known that she died rather by the excess of joy which she experienced at
the thought of seeing him again after an absence of nearly two years?
Why change the ages, and give Miss Chaworth fifteen when she was
eighteen, or himself eighteen when he was fifteen? Why give him such an
affectionate guardian instead of Lord Carlisle? It may be argued that in
these changes in the actual life of Lord Byron, we must only perceive
the genius of the writer, who by making the hero's infancy a sad one,
and causing the first glimpse of happiness to dawn upon him at Cherbury,
in depriving him of his mother at an early age in order that he may live
entirely in the Herbert family, where he finds so much happiness, and
repays it so well, Mr. Disraeli believed that he could bring out in
better relief all the tenderness, kindness, docility, gratitude,
constancy, and those other rare and splendid qualities of his hero's
young soul. In reducing Miss Herbert's years, and in increasing those of
his hero, the author no doubt wished to render forcible the sentiments
which a child of fifteen could not otherwise have inspired in a young
girl of eighteen. The imaginary duel was probably conceived to afford
the author an opportunity of showing his hero under other admirable
aspects, and especially to furnish him with the means of casting blame
upon Engl