according to this, his 'Autobiography' was made the means of this gross
insult to his widow three months after his death.

If some powerful cause had not paralysed all feelings of gentlemanly
honour, and of womanly delicacy, and of common humanity, towards Lady
Byron, throughout the whole British nation, no editor would have dared to
open a periodical with such an article; or, if he had, he would have been
overwhelmed with a storm of popular indignation, which, like the fire
upon Sodom, would have made a pillar of salt of him for a warning to all
future generations.

'Blackwood' reproves the 'John Bull' in a poetical epistle, recognising
the article as coming from Byron, and says to the author,--

'But that you, sir, a wit and a scholar like you,
Should not blush to produce what he blushed not to do,--
Take your compliment, youngster; this doubles, almost,
The sorrow that rose when his honour was lost.'

We may not wonder that the 'Autobiography' was burned, as Murray says in
a recent account, by a committee of Byron's friends, including Hobhouse,
his sister, and Murray himself.

Now, the 'Blackwood' of July 1824 thus declares its conviction that this
outrage on every sentiment of human decency came from Lord Byron, and
that his honour was lost. Maginn does not undertake the memoir. No
memoir at all is undertaken; till finally Moore is selected, as, like
Demetrius of old, a well-skilled gilder and 'maker of silver shrines,'
though not for Diana. To Moore is committed the task of doing his best
for this battered image, in which even the worshippers recognise foul