“No meaning puzzles more than wit.”
The Editor is evidently a nice man, with very nasty ideas. Not the Holywell Street Press, not the most prurient pages of Romance, can equal the skimble skamble stuff of its virtuous indignation articles. The death of Lady Noel Byron, the widow of the great Poet, is a case in point:—
“The creature’s at his dirty work again,”
The discretion of an Editor is never better employed than in steering clear of the idle gossip and calumnies of the day, and if there ever was a name that should be tenderly uttered, it is that of George Gordon Noel Byron. It is a gross violation of Editorial duty to bespatter, to assail with infamy, the memory of a Poet, only thirty-seven years of age, who accomplished so much, and whose early death eclipsed the gaiety of nations!
“Ruins of years—though few, yet full of fate:”
Why the Childe will live as long as the language endures:
“Not in the air shall these my words disperse,”
Now who are you, Mr. Editor of the Telegraph, and of what faith, to impiously dare to scan the thoughts, and discern the intents of the human heart? That power to scan belongs to God only.
You are told, on Divine authority, which no Christian disputes, to “JUDGE NOT,” and yet you do not scruple to assert that Byron “was driven from his country, and deserved the doom.” Would the editor of the Telegraph, the writer of this censorship, escape, if all had their deserts?
Why this wretched, Papistical jumble about the “adoration of Lady Byron by the serious world,” and “reconciliation in the grave,” and “her prayers having been heard for her erring husband.” But I hasten to dismiss this Pharisee of the Telegraph, who daily reminds us that