He tears her from her children; he treats her with personal abuse; he repudiates her,--sends her out to nakedness and poverty; he installs another mistress in his house, and sends for the first to be her handmaid and his own: and all this the meek saint accepts in the words of Milton,-- 'My guide and head, What thou hast said is just and right.' Accordingly, Miss Martineau tells us that when Campbell's defence came out, coupled with a note from Lady Byron,-- 'The first obvious remark was, that there was no real disclosure; and the whole affair had the appearance of a desire, on the part of Lady Byron, to exculpate herself, while yet no adequate information was given.

Many, who had regarded her with favour till then, gave her up so far as to believe that feminine weakness had prevailed at last.' The saint had fallen from her pedestal! She had shown a human frailty! Quite evidently she is not a Griselda, but possessed with a shocking desire to exculpate herself and her friends.
Is it, then, only to slandered men that the privilege belongs of desiring to exculpate themselves and their families and their friends from unjust censure?
Lord Byron had made it a life-long object to vilify and defame his wife.
He had used for that one particular purpose every talent that he possessed.

He had left it as a last charge to Moore to pursue the warfare after death, which Moore had done to some purpose; and Christopher North had informed Lady Byron that her private affairs were discussed, not only with the whisky-toddy of the Noctes Club, but in every drawing-room in May Fair; and declared that the 'Dear Duck' letter, and various other matters, must be explained, and urged somebody to speak; and then, when Campbell does speak with all the energy of a real gentleman, a general outcry and an indiscriminate melee is the result.
The world, with its usual injustice, insisted on attributing Campbell's defence to Lady Byron.
The reasons for this seemed to be, first, that Campbell states that he did not ask Lady Byron's leave, and that she did not authorise him to defend her; and, second, that, having asked some explanations from her, he prints a note in which she declines to give any.
We know not how a lady could more gently yet firmly decline to make a gentleman her confidant than in this published note of Lady Byron; and yet, to this day, Campbell is spoken of by the world as having been Lady Byron's confidant at this time.

This simply shows how very trustworthy are the general assertions about Lady Byron's confidants.
The final result of the matter, so far as Campbell was concerned, is given in Miss Martineau's sketch, in the following paragraph:-- 'The whole transaction was one of poor Campbell's freaks.

He excused himself by saying it was a mistake of his; that he did not know what he was about when he published the paper.' It is the saddest of all sad things to see a man, who has spoken from moral convictions, in advance of his day, and who has taken a stand for which he ought to honour himself, thus forced down and humiliated, made to doubt his own better nature and his own honourable feelings, by the voice of a wicked world.
Campbell had no steadiness to stand by the truth he saw.