Byron's own frank and lawless admissions of evil are set down to a peculiar inability he had for speaking the truth about himself,--sometimes about his near relations; all which does not in the least discourage the authoress from giving a separate chapter on 'Lord Byron's Love of Truth.' In the matter of his relations with women, she complacently repeats (what sounds rather oddly as coming from her) Lord Byron's own assurance, that he never seduced a woman; and also the equally convincing statement, that he had told her (the Guiccioli) that his married fidelity to his wife was perfect.

She discusses Moore's account of the mistress in boy's clothes who used to share Byron's apartments in college, and ride with him to races, and whom he presented to ladies as his brother.
She has her own view of this matter.

The disguised boy was a lady of rank and fashion, who sought Lord Byron's chambers, as, we are informed, noble ladies everywhere, both in Italy and England, were constantly in the habit of doing; throwing themselves at his feet, and imploring permission to become his handmaids.
In the authoress's own words, 'Feminine overtures still continued to be made to Lord Byron; but the fumes of incense never hid from his sight his IDEAL.' We are told that in the case of these poor ladies, generally 'disenchantment took place on his side without a corresponding result on the other: THENCE many heart-breakings.' Nevertheless, we are informed that there followed the indiscretions of these ladies 'none of those proceedings that the world readily forgives, but which his feelings as a man of honour would have condemned.' As to drunkenness, and all that, we are informed he was an anchorite.
Pages are given to an account of the biscuits and soda-water that on this and that occasion were found to be the sole means of sustenance to this ethereal creature.
As to the story of using his wife's money, the lady gives, directly in the face of his own Letters and Journal, the same account given before by Medwin, and which caused such merriment when talked over in the Noctes Club,--that he had with her only a marriage portion of 10,000 pounds; and that, on the separation, he not only paid it back, but doubled it.

{119} So on the authoress goes, sowing right and left the most transparent absurdities and misstatements with what Carlyle well calls 'a composed stupidity, and a cheerful infinitude of ignorance.' Who should know, if not she, to be sure?
Had not Byron told her all about it?
and was not his family motto Crede Byron?
The 'Blackwood,' having a dim suspicion that this confused style of attack and defence in reference to the two parties under consideration may not have great weight, itself proceeds to make the book an occasion for re-opening the controversy of Lord Byron with his wife.
The rest of the review devoted to a powerful attack on Lady Byron's character, the most fearful attack on the memory of a dead woman we have ever seen made by living man.

The author proceeds, like a lawyer, to gather up, arrange, and restate, in a most workmanlike manner, the confused accusations of the book.
Anticipating the objection, that such a re-opening of the inquiry was a violation of the privacy due to womanhood and to the feelings of a surviving family, he says, that though marriage usually is a private matter which the world has no right to intermeddle with or discuss, yet-- 'Lord Byron's was an exceptional case.