It is sorrowful to think that in a very little time this young and amiable creature, wise, patient, and feeling, will have her character mistaken by every one who reads Byron's works.

To rescue her from this I preserved her letters, and when she afterwards expressed a fear that anything of her writing should ever fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she meant by publication), I safely assured her that it never should.

But here this letter shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour, unknown to herself.
'I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last Canto of "Childe Harold" may produce on the minds of indifferent readers.
'It contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake, though his object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could thus be oppressed into eternal stupor.

I will hope, as you do, that it survives for his ultimate good.
'It was the acuteness of his remorse, impenitent in its character, which so long seemed to demand from my compassion to spare every semblance of reproach, every look of grief, which might have said to his conscience, "You have made me wretched." 'I am decidedly of opinion that he is responsible.

He has wished to be thought partially deranged, or on the brink of it, to perplex observers and _prevent them from tracing effects to their real causes_ through all the intricacies of his conduct.