Satan--all the most disreputable persons mentioned in sacred and profane
history; his benevolences were maligned, his most disinterested actions
perverted. Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, was on his account, on one occasion,
driven off the public stage. He was advised not to go to the theatres,
lest he should be hissed; nor to Parliament, lest he should be insulted.
On the very day of his departure a friend told him that he feared violence
from mobs assembling at the door of his carriage. "Upon what grounds," the
poet writes, in a trenchant survey of the circumstances, in August, 1819,
"the public formed their opinion, I am not aware; but it was general, and
it was decisive. Of me and of mine they knew little, except that I had
written poetry, was a nobleman, bad married, became a father, and was
involved in differences with my wife and her relatives--no one knew why,
because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances.

"The press was active and scurrilous;.. my name--which had been a
knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for
William the Norman--was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered and
muttered and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England
was unfit for me. I withdrew; but this was not enough. In other
countries--in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue
depth of the lakes--I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I
crossed the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther,
and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who
betakes himself to the waters."

On the 16th of April, 1816, shortly before his departure, he wrote to Mr.
Rogers: "My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow. We shall not
meet again for some time, at all events, if ever (it was their final
meeting), and under these circumstances I trust to stand excused to you
and Mr. Sheridan for being unable to wait upon him this evening." In all