death.

3rd. That they did so continue it.

4th. That the accusations reached their climax over Lady Byron's grave
in 'Blackwood' of 1869, and the Guiccioli book, and that this re-opening
of the controversy was my reason for speaking.

And first I shall adduce my proofs that Lady Byron's reputation was,
during the whole course of her husband's life, the subject of a
concentrated, artfully planned attack, commencing at the time of the
separation and continuing during his life. By various documents
carefully prepared, and used publicly or secretly as suited the case, he
made converts of many honest men, some of whom were writers and men of
letters, who put their talents at his service during his lifetime in
exciting sympathy for him, and who, by his own request, felt bound to
continue their defence of him after he was dead.

In order to consider the force and significance of the documents I shall
cite, we are to bring to our view just the issues Lord Byron had to meet,
both at the time of the separation and for a long time after.

In Byron's 'Memoirs,' Vol. IV. Letter 350, under date December 10, 1819,
nearly four years after the separation, he writes to Murray in a state of
great excitement on account of an article in 'Blackwood,' in which his
conduct towards his wife had been sternly and justly commented on, and
which he supposed to have been written by Wilson, of the 'Noctes
Ambrosianae.' He says in this letter: 'I like and admire W---n, and he
should not have indulged himself in such outrageous license. . . . . When
he talks of Lady Byron's business he talks of what he knows nothing