Part 2 (1/2)

'He did reat friend of the _other branch of the house of Atreus_, and the Greek teacher, I believe, of my _moral_ Clytemnestra I say _moral_ because it is true, and is so useful to the virtuous, that it enables theistheus'

If Lord Byron wrote this poem merely in a momentary fit of spleen, ere there so many persons evidently quite familiar with his allusions to it? and as it preserved in Murray's hands? and why published after his death? That Byron was in the habit of reposing documents in the hands of Murray, to be used as occasion offered, is evident fro soo forth with my name except _to the initiated_' {22b}

Murray, in publishi+ng this attack on his wife after Lord Byron's death, showed that he believed in it, and, so believing, deemed Lady Byron a woman whose ed state deserved neither sympathy nor delicacy of treatment At a tied wo to justify herself from such cruel slander of a dead husband, an honest, kind-hearted, worthy Englishive these lines to her eyes and the eyes of all the reading world Nothing can show hly it did its work! Considering Byron as a wrongedhim justice His editor prefaced the whole set of 'Do statements:--

'They all refer to the unhappy separation, of which the precise causes are still a mystery, and which he declared to the last were never disclosed to himself He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments, disordered health, and dislike to faravated his naturally violent temper, and driven him to excesses He suspected that his mother-in-law had fomented the discord,--which Lady Byron denies,--and that nant offices of a female dependant, who is the subject of the bitterly satirical sketch

'To these general stateations of Lady Byron, that she conceived his conduct to be the result of insanity,--that, the physician pronouncing him responsible for his actions, she could subton, her legal adviser, agreed that a reconciliation was neither proper nor possible _No weight can be attached to the opinions of an opposing counsel upon accusations ently demanded and was pertinaciously refused the least opportunity of denial or defence_ He rejected the proposal for an amicable separation, but _consented when threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons_' {23}

Neither John Murray nor any of Byron's partisans seem to have pondered the admission in these last words

Here, as appears, was a wo with her child in her arlish laws protection for herself and child against her husband

She had appealed to the first counsel in England, and was acting under their direction

Two of the greatest lawyers in England have pronounced that there has been such a cause of offence on his part that a return to him is neither proper nor possible, and that no alternative remains to her but separation or divorce

He asks her to state her charges against hi answer under advice of her counsel, says, 'That if he _insists_ on the specifications, he must receive theht to have been the conduct of any brave, honest e of her reputation for virtue to turn every one against him, who saw that she had turned on her side even the lawyer he sought to retain on his; {24} that she was an unscrupulous woain her ends, while he stood before the public, as he says, 'accused of every monstrous vice, by public rumour or private rancour'? When she, under advice of her lawyers, ation in court for divorce, what did he do?

HE SIGNED THE ACT OF SEPARATION AND LEFT ENGLAND

Now, let any land,--let any laho knows the character of Sir Saton, ask whether _they_ were the men to take a case into court for a woman that had no _evidence_ but her own stateo to trial without proofs? Did they not know that there were artful, hysterical women in the world, and would _they_, of all people, be the men to take a woman's story on her own side, and advise her in the last issue to bring it into open court, without legal proof of the strongest kind? Now, as long as Sir Samuel Romilly lived, this statement of Byron's--that he was conde whereof he _was accused--never appeared in public_

It, however, was most actively circulated in _private_ That Byron was in the habit of intrusting to different confidants articles of various kinds to be shown to different circles as they could bear them, we have already shown We have recently coerness to exculpate Byron, a new document has turned up, of which Mr Murray, it appears, had never heard when, after Byron's death, he published in the preface to his 'Domestic Pieces' the sentence: '_He rejected the proposal for an amicable separation, but consented when threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons_' It appears that, up to 1853, neither John Murray senior, nor the son who now fills his place, had taken any notice of this newly found document, which we are now inforust 1817, while Mr Hobhouse was staying with hiory Lewis, _for circulation aland_, found in Mr

Lewis's papers after his death, and _now_ in the possession of Mr

Murray' Here it is:--

'It has been intial advisers of Lady Byron have declared ”their lips to be sealed up” on the cause of the separation between her and myself If their lips are sealed up, they are not sealed up by reatest favour _they_ can confer upon me will be to open them From the first hour in which I was apprised of the intentions of the Noel family to the last communication between Lady Byron and myself in the character of wife and husband (a period of some months), I called repeatedly and in vain for a statees, and it was chiefly in consequence of Lady Byron's clai) a promise on my part to consent to a separation, if such was _really_ her wish, that I consented at all; this clai and inexpiable manner in which their object was pursued, which rendered it next to an impossibility that two persons so divided could ever be reunited, induced n the deed, which I shall be happy--o before any tribunal which may discuss the business in the most public manner

'Mr Hobhouse ate all prior intentions--and go into court--the very day before the separation was signed, and it was declined by the other party, as also the publication of the correspondence during the previous discussion

Those propositions I beg here to repeat, and to call upon her and hers to say their worst, pledging ations,--whatever they may be,--and only too happy to be inforust 9, 1817

'PS--I have been, and aations, charges, or whatever name they may have assumed, are; and am as little aware for what purpose they have been kept back,--unless it was to sanction the most infamous calumnies by silence

'BYRON'