Charlemont led to
it. It is a strange business! He declares that he left no means untried to
effect a reconciliation, and always adds with bitterness, "A day will
arrive when I shall be avenged. I feel that I shall not live long, and
when the grave has closed over me, what must she feel?" All who wish well
to Lady Byron must desire that she should not survive her husband, for the
all-atoning grave that gives oblivion to the errors of the dead, clothes
those of the living in such sombre colours to their own too-late awakened
feelings, as to render them wretched for life, and more than avenges the
real, or imagined wrongs of those we have lost for ever.
When Lord Byron was praising the mental and personal qualifications of
Lady Byron, I asked him how all that he now said agreed with certain
sarcasms supposed to bear a reference to her, in his works. He smiled,
shook his head, and said they were meant to spite and vex her, when he was
wounded and irritated at her refusing to receive or answer his letters;
that he was not sincere in his implied censures, and that he was sorry he
had written them; but notwithstanding this regret, and all his good
resolutions to avoid similar sins, he might on renewed provocation recur
to the same vengeance, though he allowed it was petty and unworthy of him.
Lord Byron speaks of his sister, Mrs.
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