Those who know me are undeceived, and those who do not I have little
interest in undeceiving. I have no particular desire that any but my
acquaintance should think the author better than the beings of his
imagining; but I can not help a little surprise, and perhaps amusement,
at some odd critical exceptions in the present instance, when I see
several bards in very reputable plight, and quite exempted from all
participation in the faults of their heroes, who nevertheless might be
found with little more morality than the Giaour; and perhaps--but no--I
must admit Childe Harold to be a very repulsive personage, and as to his
identity, those who like it must give him whatever _alias_ they please."

And in order to embrace the whole of his life in these quotations, we
will add what he said at Cephalonia, to Dr. Kennedy, shortly before his
death:--

"I can not conceive why people will always mix up my own character and
opinions, with those of the imaginary beings which, as a poet, I have
the right and liberty to draw."

"They certainly do not spare your lordship in that respect," replied
Kennedy; "and in 'Childe Harold,' 'Lara,' the 'Giaour,' and 'Don Juan,'
they are too much disposed to think that you paint in many instances
yourself, and that these characters are only the vehicles for the
expression of your own sentiments and feelings."

"They do me great injustice," he replied, "and what was never before
done to any poet.... But even in 'Don Juan' I have been misunderstood. I
take a vicious and unprincipled character, and lead him through those
ranks of society whose high external accomplishments cover and cloak
internal and secret vices, and I paint the natural effects of such
characters, and certainly they are not so highly colored as we find them
in real life."

"This may be true," said Kennedy, "but the question is, what are your
motives and object for painting nothing but scenes of vice and folly?"

"To remove the cloak which the manners and maxims of society," said his
lordship, "throw over their secret sins, and show them to the world as
they really are. You have not," added he, "been so much in high and
noble life as I have been; but if you had fully entered into it, and
seen what was going on, you would have felt convinced that it was time
to unmask the specious hypocrisy, and show it in its native colors!"

Kennedy having then remarked that the lower and middling classes of
society never entertained the opi