MOORE has much to answer forHe stands guilty of having violated a sacred trust confided to him by one of the master-spirits of the age; and that, too, under circumstances which, if he had any feeling of gratitude, should to him have rendered the trust doubly sacred. It is no excuse to say, that he remonstrated against the destruction of Byron's Memoirs, or that he witnessed the act with regret. It is mere drivelling to attempt to exculpate himself by alleging that his opinion was overruled. The question is simply this-Who did give up the manuscript to its destroyers? It had been entrusted to him-bestowed upon him and his family as a boon-and he had pledged it in security for a loan of money. As property which he had so pledged, had he no power to save it from the flames? Was not Murray, with whom he pledged the work,indemnified? We will not say, as we have heard it said, that surely Moore received some pecuniary inducement for consenting to the destruction. That imputation implies a meanness of which we believe him utterly incapable; but he ought to have treated as a personal insult any overture towards a negotiation which will be long memorable by its result. If the work was thought unfit for immediate publication, why not seal it up, and leave it to posterity? Lord Byron's account of himself would have excited curiosity and interestyea sympathy-when all those, in deference to whom it was sacrificed, will only be remembered to be blamed.— Who can have forgotten the odious slanders circulated at the period when he was so ungenerously deserted by his wife, amidst the ruins of their common fortunes?

"Poor fellow! he had many things to wound him ;

was a trying moment, that which found

or rather explanation, which he was too proud to offer while he lived, he bequeathed to a friend. How that friend, and other friends, have done their part, the world is enabled to judge by the violations of the confidence of hospitality with which the press is teeming to supply the void which they have so unpardonably created.

While on this subject, there is one question to which the world, after what has happened, is now entitled to some answer Was it not a conditionand previous to executing the deed of separation from Lady Byron-that her ladyship's father should sign a declaration, expressive, in the most explicit and unqualified terms of his conviction that the alleged causes for the separation- that is, these calumnies against Lord Byron then in the mouths of the multitude-were utter falsehoods? Is that declaration still in the possession of the particular friend to whose care it was confided?—One of those who assisted, as we have heard, at the burning of the Memoirs-or has it too been consigned to the flames?

That Byron's Memoirs contained many objectionable passages, is very probable; but they could not have been such as we have heard insinuated, for it is well known that a lady of irreproachable purity not only read, but copied them. No one, therefore, can doubt that the destruction has served the cause of hypocrisy much more than that of virtue. In a word, was it moral delicacy-was it any respect for the opinion of the world, that so worked upon the timid faculties and weak minds of his lordship's confidants, as to cause them to destroy a narrative of facts and circumstances, which might have changed the current of public sympathy from the course in which it has hitherto run?

But our present business is with Medwin's book. In many of the anecdotes it is substantially true, and therein consists all its interest; but the friends of Lord Byron will never cease to regret that so bald and meagre a representation of his conversational talents should have seen the light. It was Michel Angelo, we be

lieve, who first remarked, that no artist could impress his works with a stronger moral expression than accorded with the energies of his own character; and the observation, as applied to this poor and ineffectual delineation of one of the most varied, powerful, and singular minds which has appeared for many ages, is completely verified. But, independently of the general non-resemblance of Medwin's fleshless skeleton to the bloom and gaiety of the living original, a most extraordinary degree of ignorance and inaccuracy pervades the whole work. For example, he represents Lord Byron as giving the following account of his parentage and childhood:

"I lost my father when I was only six years of age. My mother, when she was in a rage with me, (and I gave her cause enough,) used to say, 'Ah, you little dog, you are a Byron all over; you are as bad as your father!' It was very different from Mrs Malaprop's saying. Ah! good dear Mr Malaprop, I never loved him till he was dead.' But, in fact, my father was, in his youth, anything but a Cælebs in search

of a wife.' He would have made a bad hero for Hannah More. He ran out three

fortunes, and married or ran away with three women, and once wanted a guinea, that he wrote for; I have the note. He seemed born for his own ruin, and that of the other sex. He began by seducing Lady Carmarthen, and spent for her L.4000 a-year; and not content with one adventure of this kind, afterwards eloped with Miss Gordon. His marriage was not destined to be a very fortunate one either, and I don't wonder at her differing from Sheridan's widow in the play. They certainly could not have claimed the flitch."

It does not appear from this that Medwin was sure the Miss Gordon alluded to was the mother of Lord Byron. But, whatever were the follies of his lordship's father, it is well known, notwithstanding the love which the ill-fated poet cherished for his mother, that there was little in her manners, conduct, or conversation, calculated to repress the ancestral impulses of his blood. It would be to imitate here the gossiping which we condemn, to say anything more particular; we would ask, however, some abatement in the wrath of the rigidly righteous, (who never sin themselves,) against the profligacy, as it is called, of Byron, on the score of the baleful influences to which, in the most impressible period of life, he was so unhappily exposed. Whatever might have been the VOL. XVI.

of virtue!

Though the old Lord Byron was acquitted of murder, no one can read the circumstances of his duel without being morally persuaded of his guilt. It is, however, not generally known, how much the misanthropy to which he abandoned himself after his trial affected the fortunes of his heir. Everything at Newstead Abbey was allowed to run to waste; all the timber worth anything was felled; and a Chancerysuit was entailed on the inheritance.

Moreover, it was doubted if Byron was the legitimate heir-at least his relation and guardian, Lord Carlisle, withheld from him the ordinary courtesy, after he became of age, of introducing him to the House of Peers; and he was compelled, under circumstances extremely mortifying, to prove his legitimacy, an onus to which few. noblemen are, we believe, on such occasions subjected.

That Lord Byron felt this deeply, and resented it strongly, everybody knows; but his reply to the Chancellor, when the doubts of that learned personage were removed, is not generally known. Lord Eldon is said to have expressed his regret that the place he held in the House had obliged him to do what he had done, and added some kind and conciliating observations." Your lordship," replied Byron, "may say, like Tom Thumb,

I've done my duty, and no more.'

This, though jocularly said, was the expression of an embittered spirit; and if afterwards, (always bearing in mind the undisciplined character of his education) he shewed but little 3 Y

reverence for the gravest forms in the institutions of his country,-is there to be no allowance of indulgence to the natural effect of public mortification on such a temperament as that of Lord Byron? We are not his apologists, we desire only to procure for him that consideration of the effect of circumstances over which he had no control, which is due to actual misfortune, and to remind our readers, that in so far as the circumstances of his boyhood have been overlooked, in so much has he perhaps been harshly judged. Captain Medwin's account of his lordship's marriage and separation, is, among other things, as we have al ready intimated, in substance true; -but some of the incidents are much better told by the poet in Don Juan, which, however, we have, of course, too much regard for the morality of our readers to quote; but we refer those who dare venture on the experiment, to the first canto.

In speaking of the consequences of the extravagance of Lord and Lady Byron, the inaccuracy of Captain Medwin proves how very slenderly indeed he must have been in his lordship's confidence; for he represents him as saying,

"In addition to all these mortifications, my affairs were irretrievably involved, and almost so as to make me what they wished [mad]-I was compelled to part with Newstead."

But Newstead had been parted with long before their marriage. If we recollect rightly, it was first sold in 1813, (perhaps in 1812,) for I..130,000. The purchaser afterwards paid a forfeit, and gave up the bargain. The estate was again sold, and the greater part of the money vested in trustees, for the jointure of Lady Byron. His Lordship may have regretted the sale of the Abbey, but it assuredly was not on account of anything connected with his unfortunate marriage that he was induced to part with it.

The story of keeping a girl in boy's clothes, and passing her for his cousin, lest his mother should hear of it, Lord Byron has had abundant cause to repent; but the affair itself had a most ludicrous conclusion, for the young gentleman miscarried in a certain family hotel in Bond Street, to the inexpressible horror of the chambermaids, and the consternation of all

the house. By the way, this style of keeping a mistress, must, we rather think, be the most exemplary; for it has been said that an arithmetical member of the House of Commons, during his voyage in the Levant, carried his with him in male attire.

We suspect that Byron had some presentiment of the object of Medwin's solicitude for his company, and some anticipation, too, of the alarm and laughter which his gossiping would produce when published, particularly when he told him of the three married women, who, on a wedding visit to Lady Byron, met in the same room, and whom he had "known to be all birds of the same nest." To discover the names of these worthy matrons, we doubt not is the object of all the games of twenty questions now playing in the fashionable world; we are not, however, disposed to disbelieve the fact; at the same time, it is proper to observe, that one of the worst effects of Lord Byron's passion for fame, was an affectation of his being more profligate than he really was; and we state this emphatically, while, in justice to the ladies of England, we enter our protest against the general calumny of the following passage, in which his lordship is made to say,

"I have seen a great deal of Italian society, and swam in a gondola ; but nothing could equal the profligacy of high life in England, especially that of (London) when I knew it."

As far, perhaps, as Lord Byron spoke from his own experience, and from the report of his associates, we are not inclined to dispute the accusation; but is it not perfectly well-known, that, in England, society in high life is divided into two classes, as distinct and separate from each other as any two castes can well be? With the one, both manners and minds are cherished in the most graceful excellencedomestic virtue combined with all that is elegant, gentle, and beneficent, as fair and free from stain as habitual honour in its highest acceptation can imply. To this class Lord Byron had NOT access. His previous family circumstances, and the impress which those circumstances had left upon himself, made him to be regarded with distrust by the members of that illustrious and true English nobility. There was a hereditary taint on his name, and the early indications of his own