"Lord Byron fared in the same way. His countrymen were in a bad humor with him. His writings and his character had lost the charm of novelty. He had been guilty of the offense which, of all offenses, is punished most severely; he had been overpraised; he had excited too warm an interest; and the public, with its usual justice, chastised him for its own folly. The attachments of the multitude bear no small resemblance to those of the wanton enchantress in the Arabian Tales, who, when the forty days of her fondness were over, was not content with dismissing her lovers, but condemned them to expiate, in loathsome shapes, and under cruel penances, the crime of having once pleased her too well.
"The obloquy which Byron had to endure was such as might well have shaken a more constant mind. The newspapers were filled with lampoons. The theatres shook with execrations. He was excluded from circles where he had lately been the observed of all observers. All those creeping things that riot in the decay of nobler natures hastened to their repast; and they were right; they did after their kind. It is not every day that the savage envy of aspiring dunces is gratified by the agonies of such a spirit, and the degradation of such a name. The unhappy man left his country forever. The howl of contumely followed him across the sea, up the Rhine, over the Alps; it gradually waxed fainter; it died away; those who had raised it began to ask each other, what, after all, was the matter about which they had been so clamorous, and wished to invite back the criminal whom they had just chased from them. His poetry became more popular than it had ever been; and his complaints were read with tears by thousands and tens of thousands who had never seen his face."
These observations of Macaulay are applied by Mr. Disraeli to Lord Cadurcis, who, in his novel called "Venetia," is no other than Lord Byron:—
"Lord Cadurcis," says he, "was the periodical victim, the scapegoat of English morality, sent into the wilderness with all the crimes and curses of the multitude on his head. Lord Cadurcis had certainly committed a great crime, not his intrigue with Lady Monteagle, for that surely was not an unprecedented offense; nor his duel with her husband, for after all it was a duel in self-defense: and, at all events, divorces and duels, under any circumstances, would scarcely have excited or authorized the storm which was now about to burst over the late spoiled child of society. But Lord Cadurcis had been guilty of the offense which, of all offenses, is punished most severely. Lord Cadurcis had been overpraised. He had excited too warm an interest; and the public, with its usual justice, was resolved to chastise him for its own folly. There are no fits of caprice so hasty and so violent as those of society. Cadurcis, in allusion to his sudden and singular success, had been in the habit of saying to his intimates that he 'woke one morning and found himself famous.' He might now observe, 'I woke one morning and found myself infamous.' Before twenty-four hours had passed over his duel with Lord Monteagle, he found himself branded by every journal in London as an unprincipled and unparalleled reprobate. The public, without waiting to think, or even to inquire after the truth, instantly selected as genuine the most false and the most flagrant of the fifty libellous narratives that were circulated of the transaction. Stories, inconsistent with themselves, were all alike eagerly believed, and what evidence there might be for any one of them, the virtuous people, by whom they were repeated, neither knew nor cared. The public, in short, fell into a passion with their daring, and, ashamed of their past idolatry, nothing would satisfy them but knocking the divinity on the head."
And this same Mr. Disraeli, whose testimony is all the more precious as coming from a Tory celebrity, after having described the shameful reception given by the noble House to Lord Cadurcis, when he presented himself there after the duel, and the atrocious conduct of the stupid populace clamoring against him outside, goes on in these terms:—
"And indeed to witness this young, and noble, and gifted creature, but a few days back the idol of the nation, and from whom a word, a glance even, was deemed the greatest and most gratifying distinction—whom all orders, classes, and conditions of men had combined to stimulate with multiplied adulation, with all the glory and ravishing delights of the world, as it were, forced upon him—to see him thus assailed with the savage execrations of all those vile things who exult in the fall of every thing that is great and the abasement of every thing that is noble, was indeed a spectacle which might have silenced malice and satisfied envy!"
To these just appreciations formed by some of Lord Byron's biographers we might add many more; but the limits we have assigned to this work not admitting of it, we will only add, as a last testimony, the most severe of all; him of whom Moore said, "that, if one wished to speak against Lord Byron, one had only to apply to him," that is, to Lord Byron himself.
In 1820, when Lord Byron was at Ravenna, an article from "Blackwood's Magazine," entitled "Observations on Don Juan," was sent him.
It contained such unfounded strictures on his matrimonial conduct, that, for once, Lord Byron infringed his rule and could not help answering it. The extracts from his defense, "if defense it can be called," says Moore, "where there has never yet been any definite charge, will be read with the liveliest interest." Here, then, is a part of these extracts:—