But to acknowledge all these things, or even any thing extraordinarily good in the author of "Don Juan," the "Age of Bronze," the "Vision;" in a son so wanting in respect for the weaknesses of his mother-country; in a poet that had dared to chastise powerful enemies, and the limit of whose audacity was not even yet known, for his death had just condemned, through revelations and imprudent biographies, many persons and things to a sorry kind of immortality; to praise him, declare him guiltless, do him justice,—truly that would have been asking too much from England at that time. England has since made great strides in the path of generous toleration and even toward justice to Lord Byron. For vain is calumny after a time: truth destroys calumny by evoking facts. These form a clear atmosphere, wherein truth becomes luminous, as the sun in its atmosphere: for facts give birth to truth, and are mortal to calumny.
FOOTNOTES:
[42] The history of the page is, however, true. Lord Byron was then nineteen years of age. Not to give his mother the grief of seeing that he had made an acquaintance she would have disapproved, he brought Miss —— from Brighton to the Abbey, dressed as a page, that she might pass for her brother Gordon.
[43] See "Newstead Abbey," by Washington Irving.
[44] Moore, vol. i. p. 346.
[45] See Galt, "Life of Lord Byron."
[46] See chapter on "Generosity."
[47] See "Life in Italy."
[48] The heroism of the young Zuleika, says Mr. G. Ellis in his criticism, is full of purity and loveliness. Never was a more perfect character traced with greater delicacy and truth; her piety, intelligence, her exquisite sentiment of duty and her unalterable love of truth seem born in her soul rather than acquired by education. She is ever natural, seductive, affectionate, and we must confess that her affection for Selim is well placed.
[49] "Childe Harold," canto iv. stanza 177.