the world given to understand that no common rule or measure could apply
to such an undoubtedly divine production; and so the hearts of men were
to be wrung with pity for his sorrows as the yearning pain of a god, and
with anger at his injuries as sacrilege on the sacredness of genius, till
they were ready to cast themselves at his feet, and adore.

Then he was to be set up on a pedestal, like Nebuchadnezzar's image on
the plains of Dura; and what time the world heard the sound of cornet,
sackbut, and dulcimer, in his enchanting verse, they were to fall down
and worship.

For Lady Byron, Moore had simply the respect that a commoner has for a
lady of rank, and a good deal of the feeling that seems to underlie all
English literature,--that it is no matter what becomes of the woman when
the man's story is to be told. But, with all his faults, Moore was not a
cruel man; and we cannot conceive such outrageous cruelty and
ungentlemanly indelicacy towards an unoffending woman, as he shows in
these 'Memoirs,' without referring them to Lord Byron's own influence in
making him an unscrupulous, committed partisan on his side.

So little pity, so little sympathy, did he suppose Lady Byron to be
worthy of, that he laid before her, in the sight of all the world,
selections from her husband's letters and journals, in which the
privacies of her courtship and married life were jested upon with a
vulgar levity; letters filled, from the time of the act of separation,
with a constant succession of sarcasms, stabs, stings, epigrams, and
vindictive allusions to herself, bringing her into direct and insulting
comparison with his various mistresses, and implying their superiority
over her. There, too, were gross attacks on her father and mother, as
having been the instigators of the separation; and poor Lady Milbanke, in