I laugh at so feeble a defence.

It is I that say it: you may believe what I tell you.

Do you know, miserable wretch!" added he, stamping on the ground with fury, "that I have sworn to preserve my reputation, whatever be the expense; that I love it more than the whole world and its inhabitants taken together?
and do you think that you shall wound it ?" The rest of the book shows how this threat was executed.
{168} Alluding to Buchanan's election.
{178a} Shelton Mackenzie, in a note to the 'Noctes' of July 1822, gives the following saying of Maginn, one of the principal lights of the club: 'No man, however much he might tend to civilisation, was to be regarded as having absolutely reached its apex until he was drunk.' He also records it as a further joke of the club, that a man's having reached this apex was to be tested by his inability to pronounce the word 'civilisation,' which, he says, after ten o'clock at night ought to be abridged to civilation, 'by syncope, or vigorously speaking by hic-cup.' {178b} Vol.v.

pp.61, 75.
{181} These italics are ours.
{190a} This little incident shows the characteristic carefulness and accuracy of Lady Byron's habits.

This statement was written fourteen years after the events spoken of; but Lady Byron carefully quotes a passage from her mother's letter written at that time.