As to the story of using his wife's money, the lady gives, directly in
the face of his own Letters and Journal, the same account given before by
Medwin, and which caused such merriment when talked over in the Noctes
Club,--that he had with her only a marriage portion of 10,000 pounds; and
that, on the separation, he not only paid it back, but doubled it. {119}

So on the authoress goes, sowing right and left the most transparent
absurdities and misstatements with what Carlyle well calls 'a composed
stupidity, and a cheerful infinitude of ignorance.' Who should know, if
not she, to be sure? Had not Byron told her all about it? and was not
his family motto Crede Byron?

The 'Blackwood,' having a dim suspicion that this confused style of
attack and defence in reference to the two parties under consideration
may not have great weight, itself proceeds to make the book an occasion
for re-opening the controversy of Lord Byron with his wife.

The rest of the review devoted to a powerful attack on Lady Byron's
character, the most fearful attack on the memory of a dead woman we have
ever seen made by living man. The author proceeds, like a lawyer, to
gather up, arrange, and restate, in a most workmanlike manner, the
confused accusations of the book.

Anticipating the objection, that such a re-opening of the inquiry was a
violation of the privacy due to womanhood and to the feelings of a
surviving family, he says, that though marriage usually is a private
matter which the world has no right to intermeddle with or discuss, yet--

'Lord Byron's was an exceptional case. It is not too much to say,
that, had his marriage been a happy one, the course of events of the