Byron has killed his tailor. Molière has married his own daughter. Shakespeare has "loved" Lord Southampton.
"Et pour voir à la fin tous les vices ensemble,
Le parterre en tumulte a demandé l'auteur."[5]
That ensemble of all vices is Beaumarchais.
As for Byron, we mention this name a second time; he is worth the trouble. Read "Glenarvon," and listen, on the subject of Byron's abominations, to Lady Bl—-, whom he had loved, and who, of course, resented it.
Phidias was a procurer; Socrates was an apostate and a thief, décrocheur de manteaux; Spinosa was a renegade, and sought to obtain legacies by undue influence; Dante was a peculator; Michael Angelo was cudgelled by Julius II., and quietly put up with it for the sake of five hundred crowns; D'Aubigné was a courtier sleeping in the water-closet of the king, ill-tempered when he was not paid, and for whom Henri IV. was too kind; Diderot was a libertine; Voltaire a miser; Milton was venal,—he received a thousand pounds sterling for his apology, in Latin, of regicide: "Defensio pro se," etc. Who says these things? Who relates these histories? That good person, your old fawning friend, O tyrants, your ancient comrade, O traitors, your old auxiliary, O bigots, your ancient comforter, O imbeciles!—calumny.
[1] This coarse flatterer of the vulgar herd.
[2] To me they dare to prefer Crébillon the barbarian.
[3] The passage in Saumaise is curious and worth the trouble of being transcribed:—
Unus ejus Agamemnon obscuritate superat quantum est librorum sacrorum cum suis hebraismis et syrianismis et totâ hellenisticâ supellectile vel farragine. —De Re Hellenisticâ, p. 38, ep. dedic.
[4] Letter CV.