dispute
that the first cause of the unjust verdicts passed upon him lay in the
bad passions stirred up by his success, by the independent language he
used, and his contempt for a thousand national prejudices. Nevertheless,
as the degree of injustice dealt out toward him was quite extraordinary,
it may be asked whether some real defects did not lend specious reason
to his enemies, and thus we are forced to confess that he had one great
fault, which did powerfully aid their wickedness; it consisted in a
species of _cruelty_ toward himself, _a positive necessity of
calumniating himself_.

Although the origin of this fault or defect must have been principally
in the greatness of his soul, it certainly had other secondary and
lesser causes, and, in common with many other qualities, it was fatal to
his happiness; for men accustomed to exaggerate their own virtues only
too readily believed him. This mode of doing harm to and _persecuting_
himself, of casting shadows over his brilliant destiny, was so strange
and so real, that it is necessary to show to what extent he did it, by
collecting some of the numerous testimonies given among those who knew
him, before we bring out the real cause of his fault, as well as the
effect it had on his happiness and his reputation.

In no hands could his character have been less safe than his own, nor
any greater wrong offered to his memory than the substitution of what he
affected to be, for what he was.

While yet a student at Cambridge, he wrote a letter to Miss Pigott, full
of gayety and fun, giving as an excuse for his silence the dissipated
life he was leading, and which he calls _a wretched chaos of noise and
drunkenness, doing nothing but hunt, drink Burgundy, play, intrigue,
libertinize_. Then he exclaims:--

"What misery to have nothing else to do but make love and verses, and
create enemies for one's self."

But while avowing this misery, he adds that he has _just written 214
pages of prose and 1200 verses_.

And Moore remarks, in a note annexed to this curious letter:--

"We observe here, as in other parts of his early letters, that sort of
display and boast of _rakishness_ which is but too common a folly at
this period of life, when the young aspirant to manhood persuades
himself that to be profligate is to be manly. Unluckily, this boyish
desire to be thought worse than he really was remained with Lord Byron,
as did some other failings and foibles, long after the period w