It was quite possible, supposing copies of the Autobiography to exist,
that this might occasion a call from the generation of to-day, in answer
to which the suppressed work might appear. This was a rather delicate
operation to commence; but the instrument was not wanting. It was
necessary that the subject should be first opened by some irresponsible
party, whom more powerful parties might, as by accident, recognise and
patronise, and on whose weakness they might build something stronger.

Just such an instrument was to be found in Paris. The mistress of Lord
Byron could easily be stirred up and flattered to come before the world
with a book which should re-open the whole controversy; and she proved a
facile tool. At first, the work appeared prudently in French, and was
called 'Lord Byron juge par les Temoins de sa Vie,' and was rather a
failure. Then it was translated into English, and published by Bentley.

The book was inartistic, and helplessly, childishly stupid as to any
literary merits,--a mere mass of gossip and twaddle; but after all, when
one remembers the taste of the thousands of circulating-library readers,
it must not be considered the less likely to be widely read on that
account. It is only once in a century that a writer of real genius has
the art to tell his story so as to take both the cultivated few and the
average many. De Foe and John Bunyan are almost the only examples. But
there is a certain class of reading that sells and spreads, and exerts a
vast influence, which the upper circles of literature despise too much
ever to fairly estimate its power.

However, the Guiccioli book did not want for patrons in the high places
of literature. The 'Blackwood'--the old classic magazine of England; the
defender of conservatism and aristocracy; the paper of Lockhart, Wilson,