FOOTNOTES:
[138] "In none of the persons he admired," says Moore, "did I meet with a union of qualities so well fitted to succeed in the difficult task of winning him into fidelity and happiness as in the lady in question. Combining beauty of the highest order with a mind intelligent and ingenuous, having just learning enough to give refinement to her taste, and far too much taste to make pretensions to learning; with a patrician spirit proud as Lord Byron's, but showing it only in a delicate generosity of spirit, a feminine high-mindedness, which would have led her to tolerate the defects of her husband in consideration of his noble qualities and his glory, and even to sacrifice silently her own happiness rather than violate the responsibility in which she stood pledged to the world for his."
[139] This circumstance was his proposal for Miss Milbank; we shall see presently how it had taken place.
[140] "Lady Byron," said Lord Byron at Pisa, "and Mr. Medwin were continually making portraits of me; each one more unlike than the other."
[141] Moore, Letter 233.
[142] At this time of embarrassment he borrowed a large sum to give to Coleridge.
[143] Moore, p. 389.
[144] Moore's Life, vol. iii. p. 209.
[145] It is true that once Lord Byron discharged a pistol, by accident, in Lady Byron's room, when she was enciente. This action, coupled with the preoccupations and sadness overwhelming Lord Byron's mind at this time, and further aided by the insinuation of Mrs. Claremont, made Lady Byron begin and continue to suspect that he was mad, and so fully did she believe it, that from that hour, she could never see him come near her without trembling. It was under the influence of this absurd idea that she left him. Lady Byron was not guilty of the reports then current against him. They were spread abroad by her parents: she, on the contrary, as long as she thought him mad, felt great sorrow at it. It was only when she had to persuade herself that he was not mad, that she vowed hatred against him, convinced as she was that he had only married her out of revenge, and not from love. But if an imaginary fear, and even an unreasonable jealousy may be her excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equally forgive her silence? Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons which kill at once, and defy all remedies, thus insuring the culprit's safety. This silence it is which will ever be her crime, for by it she poisoned the life of her husband.
[146] All this is either false or exaggerated. Religious criticisms were not so mild, though he had not in any way attacked religion, and the Tories never forgave his attack on the prince regent, which they made a great noise about.
[147] See the description of her life made by him to Medwin during his stay at Pisa.
[148] Lord Byron, in lines wrung from him by anguish and anger, says the moral Clytemnestra of thy lord.