correspondents became less frequent and more formal.  His tone about his approaching “papaship” tells nothing.  He was not likely to show to such men any good or natural feelings on the occasion.  In December, his daughter, Augusta Ada, was born; and early in January, he wrote to Moore so melancholy a “Heigho!” on occasion of his having been married a year, as to incite that critical observer to write him an inquiry about the state of his domestic spirits.  The end was near, and the world was about to see its idol and his wife tested in moral action of a very stringent kind.

By means of the only publication ever made or authorized by Lady Byron on the subject of her domestic life, her vindication of her parents, contained in the Appendix of Moore’s “Life” of the poet, we know, that, during her confinement, Lord Byron’s nearest relatives were alarmed by tokens of eccentricity so marked, that they informed her, as soon as she was recovered, that they believed him insane.  His confidential servant bore the same testimony; and she naturally believed it, when she resumed her place in the household, and saw how he was going on.  On the sixth of January, the day after he wrote the “Heigho!” to Moore, he desired his wife, in writing, to go to her parents on the first day that it was possible for her to travel.  Her physicians would not let her go earlier than the fifteenth; and on that day she went.  She never saw her husband again.

She had, in agreement with his family, consulted Dr. Baillie on her husband’s behalf; and he, supposing the insanity to be real, advised, before seeing Lord Byron, that she should obey his wish about absenting herself, as an experiment,—­and that, in the interval, she should converse only on light and cheerful topics.  She observed these directions, and, in the spirit of them, wrote two letters, on the journey, which bore no marks of the trouble which existed between them.  These letters were afterwards used, even circulated, to create a belief that Lady Byron had been suddenly persuaded to desert her husband, though he at least was well aware that the fact was not so.  It soon appeared that he was not insane.  Such was the decision of physicians, relatives, and presently of Lady Byron herself.  While there was any room for supposing disease to be the cause of his conduct, she and her parents were anxious to use all tenderness with him, and devote themselves to his welfare; but when it became necessary to consider him sane, his wife declared that she could not return to him.

It is not necessary to dwell on the imputations Lord Byron spread abroad at the time, and his biographer afterwards, against the parents of his wife, and everybody belonging to them who could be supposed to have the slightest influence over Lady Byron’s views or feelings.  Those allegations were publicly shown by her to be false, nearly thirty years ago.  I refer to them now solely because they were the occasion of the only public disclosure Lady Byron ever voluntarily made on any part of the subject of her married life.  It is needless to exhibit how different in this respect was the conduct of her husband and his friends.