them you may, and show them to anybody you like. I care not. . . . '

He tells him also:--

'You will find in it a detailed account of my marriage and its
consequences, as true as a party concerned can make such an account.'

Of the extent to which this autobiography was circulated we have the
following testimony of Shelton Mackenzie, in notes to 'The Noctes' of
June 1824.

In 'The Noctes' Odoherty says:--

'The fact is, the work had been copied for the private reading of a
great lady in Florence.'

The note says:--

'The great lady in Florence, for whose private reading Byron's
autobiography was copied, was the Countess of Westmoreland. . . . Lady
Blessington had the autobiography in her possession for weeks, and
confessed to having copied every line of it. Moore remonstrated, and
she committed her copy to the flames, but did not tell him that her
sister, Mrs. Home Purvis, now Viscountess of Canterbury, had also made
a copy! . . . From the quantity of copy I have seen,--and others were
more in the way of falling in with it than myself,--I surmise that at
least half a dozen copies were made, and of these _five_ are now in
existence. Some particular parts, such as the marriage and
separation, were copied separately; but I think there cannot be less
than five full copies yet to be found.'