by their disclosure.  As far as the character of the illustrious subject of these pages is concerned, I feel that Time and Justice are doing far more in its favour than could be effected by any such gossiping details.  During the lifetime of a man of genius, the world is but too much inclined to judge of him rather by what he wants than by what he possesses, and even where conscious, as in the present case, that his defects are among the sources of his greatness, to require of him unreasonably the one without the other.  If Pope had not been splenetic and irritable, we should have wanted his Satires; and an impetuous temperament, and passions untamed, were indispensable to the conformation of a poet like Byron.  It is by posterity only that full justice is rendered to those who have paid such hard penalties to reach it.  The dross that had once hung about the ore drops away, and the infirmities, and even miseries, of genius are forgotten in its greatness.  Who now asks whether Dante was right or wrong in his matrimonial differences? or by how many of those whose fancies dwell fondly on his Beatrice is even the name of his Gemma Donati remembered?

Already, short as has been the interval since Lord Byron’s death, the charitable influence of time in softening, if not rescinding, the harsh judgments of the world against genius is visible.  The utter unreasonableness of trying such a character by ordinary standards, or of expecting to find the materials of order and happiness in a bosom constantly heaving forth from its depths such “lava floods,” is—­now that big spirit has passed from among us—­felt and acknowledged.  In reviewing the circumstances of his marriage, a more even scale of justice is held; and while every tribute of sympathy and commiseration is accorded to her, who, unluckily for her own peace, became involved in such a destiny,—­who, with virtues and attainments that would have made the home of a more ordinary man happy, undertook, in evil hour, to “turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,” and but failed where it may be doubted whether even the fittest for such a task would have succeeded,—­full allowance is, at the same time, made for the great martyr of genius himself, whom so many other causes, beside that restless fire within him, concurred to unsettle in mind and (as he himself feelingly expresses it) “disqualify for comfort;”—­whose doom it was to be either thus or less great, and whom to have tamed might have been to extinguish; there never, perhaps, having existed an individual to whom, whether as author or man, the following line was more applicable:—­

    “Si non errasset, fecerat ille minus."[98]

While these events were going on,—­events, of which his memory and heart bore painfully the traces through the remainder of his short life,—­some occurrences took place, connected with his literary history, to which it is a relief to divert the attention of the reader from the distressing subject that has now so long detained us.