'Blackwood,' which in the beginning had been the most indignantly
virtuous of the whole, now grovelled and ate dust as the serpent in the
very abjectness of submission. Odoherty (Maginn) declares that he would
rather have written a page of 'Don Juan' than a ton of 'Childe Harold.'
{95a} Timothy Tickler informs Christopher North that he means to tender
Murray, as Emperor of the North, an interleaved copy {95b} of 'Don Juan,'
with illustrations, as the only work of Byron's he cares much about; and
Christopher North, professor of moral philosophy in Edinburgh, smiles
approval! We are not, after this, surprised to see the assertion, by a
recent much-aggrieved writer in 'The London Era,' that 'Lord Byron has
been, more than any other man of the age, the teacher of the youth of
England;' and that he has 'seen his works on the bookshelves of bishops'
palaces, no less than on the tables of university undergraduates.'

A note to 'The Noctes' of July 1822 informs us of another instance of
Lord Byron's triumph over English morals:--

'The mention of this' (Byron's going to Greece) 'reminds me, by the
by, of what the Guiccioli said in her visit to London, where she was
so lionised as having been the lady-love of Byron. She was rather
fond of speaking on the subject, designating herself by some Venetian
pet phrase, which she interpreted as meaning "Love-Wife."'

What was Lady Byron to do in such a world? She retired to the deepest
privacy, and devoted herself to works of charity, and the education of
her only child, that brilliant daughter, to whose eager, opening mind the
whole course of current literature must bring so many trying questions in
regard to the position of her father and mother,--questions that the
mother might not answer. That the cruel inconsiderateness of the