retrieve his circumstances: he who is condemned by the law has a
term to his banishment, or a dream of its abbreviation; or, it may
be, the knowledge or the belief of some injustice of the law or of
its administration in his own particular: but he who is outlawed by
general opinion, without the intervention of hostile politics,
illegal judgment, or embarrassed circumstances, whether he be
innocent or guilty, must undergo all the bitterness of exile,
without hope, without pride, without alleviation. This case was
mine. Upon what grounds the public founded their opinion, I am not
aware; but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me or of mine
they knew little, except that I had written what is called poetry,
was a nobleman, had 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 fashionable world was divided into parties, mine consisting of
a very small minority; the reasonable world was naturally on the
stronger side, which happened to be the lady's, as was most proper
and polite. The press was active and scurrilous; and such was the
rage of the day, that the unfortunate publication of two copies of
verses rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects, of
both, was tortured into a species of crime, or constructive petty
treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and
private rancour: 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