es alone can comprehend, though they need not have experienced
them. But it was the very life which he infused into his heroes that
made it appear as if they could not personify any one but himself. And
as to their faults, because he was wont to give them his qualities, it
was argued, that since the latter were observable to be common to the
author and the creations of his fancy, the faults of these must likewise
be his. If only the faults, why not also the crimes? Thus it came that,
caring little for their want of argument, Byron's enemies erected
themselves into avengers of too much talent bestowed upon one single
man.

Byron might have taken up his own defense, but did not care to do so, or
did it carelessly in some letters written to intimate friends. To Moore
he wrote:--"Like all imaginative men, I, of course, embody myself with
the character while I draw it; but not a moment after the pen is from
the paper." He always, however, begged that he might be judged by his
acts; and a short time before he died at Missolonghi, after recommending
Colonel Stanhope to desist from then pressing the necessity of giving
liberty to the press, and from recommending the works of Bentham to a
people who could not even read, Byron replied to the colonel's rather
hasty remarks, "Judge me by my acts." This request he had often
repeated, as his life was not one of those which fear the light of day.
All in vain. His enemies were not satisfied with this means of putting
an end to their calumnies.

Where does M. de Lamartine find the truth which he proposes to tell the
world about Byron? Not surely among the writers whose biographies of
Byron were either works of revenge or of speculation, and sometimes
both. Not in the conversations which Byron had with several people, and
on the credulity of whom he loved to speculate. It can not, therefore,
be in the biographies of men who have written erroneously, and have not
understood their subject; but in Moore, in Parry, in Count Gamba's
works, and, may be, in a few others. I am, however, far from saying,
that Moore has acted toward Lord Byron with all that friendly feeling
which Byron recommended to him on asking him to write the Life of
Sheridan, "without offending the living or insulting the dead." Quite
the contrary. I take it that Moore has wholly disregarded his duties as
a true friend, by publishing essentially private letters, by introducing
into his books certain anecdotes which he might