On giving me the paper, Lady Byron requested me to return it to her when it had ceased to be of use to me for the purpose indicated.
Accordingly, a day or two after, I enclosed it to her in a hasty note, as I was then leaving London for Paris, and had not yet had time fully to consider the subject.
On reviewing my note, I can recall that then the whole history appeared to me like one of those singular cases where unnatural impulses to vice are the result of a taint of constitutional insanity. This has always seemed to me the only way of accounting for instances of utterly motiveless and abnormal wickedness and cruelty. These my first impressions were expressed in the hasty note written at the time:—
'London, Nov. 5, 1856.
'Dearest Friend,—I return these. They have held mine eyes waking! How strange! how unaccountable! Have you ever subjected the facts to the judgment of a medical man learned in nervous pathology?
'Is it not insanity?
"Great wits to madness nearly are allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."
'But my purpose to-night is not to write you fully what I think of this matter. I am going to write to you from Paris more at leisure.'
The rest of the letter was taken up in the final details of a charity in which Lady Byron had been engaged with me in assisting an unfortunate artist. It concludes thus:—