dailies, and made up into articles in magazines, and thus the generation
of to-day, who had no means of judging Lady Byron but by these fables of
her slanderers, were being foully deceived. The friends who knew her
personally were a small select circle in England, whom death is every day
reducing. They were few in number compared with the great world, and
were _silent_. I saw these foul slanders crystallising into history
uncontradicted by friends who knew her personally, who, firm in their own
knowledge of her virtues and limited in view as aristocratic circles
generally are, had no idea of the width of the world they were living in,
and the exigency of the crisis. When time passed on and no voice was
raised, I spoke. I gave at first a simple story, for I knew
instinctively that whoever put the first steel point of truth into this
dark cloud of slander must wait for the storm to spend itself. I must
say the storm exceeded my expectations, and has raged loud and long. But
now that there is a comparative stillness I shall proceed, first, to
prove what I have just been asserting, and, second, to add to my true
story such facts and incidents as I did not think proper at first to
state.



CHAPTER II. THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON.


In proving what I asserted in the first chapter, I make four points:

1st. A concerted attack upon Lady Byron's reputation, begun by Lord
Byron in self-defence.

2nd. That he transmitted his story to friends to be continued after his