LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
Byron
Documents Biography Criticism
Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron
Alexander R. C. Dallas to J. C. Hobhouse, 3 July 1824
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Table of Contents
Preliminary Statement
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
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Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Produced by CATH

RECOLLECTIONS

OF THE

LIFE OF LORD BYRON,


FROM THE YEAR

1808 TO THE END OF 1814;


EXHIBITING


HIS EARLY CHARACTER AND OPINIONS, DETAILING THE PROGRESS OF HIS
LITERARY CAREER, AND INCLUDING VARIOUS UNPUBLISHED
PASSAGES OF HIS WORKS.


TAKEN FROM AUTHENTIC DOCUMENTS.
IN THE POSSESSION OF THE AUTHOR.


BY THE LATE
R. C. DALLAS, Esq.


TO WHICH IS PREFIXED


AN ACCOUNT OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO THE SUPPRESSION
OF LORD BYRON’S CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE AUTHOR,
AND HIS LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER, LATELY
ANNOUNCED FOR PUBLICATION.




LONDON:

PRINTED FOR CHARLES KNIGHT, PALL-MALL-EAST.

MDCCCXXIV.
“Wooburn Vicarage, near Beaconsfield, Bucks,
3d July, 1824.
“Sir,

“Mr. Knight has informed me of the conversation he has had with you upon the subject of Lord Byron’s correspondence.

“I might have expected that as you are not unacquainted with my father, his character would have been a sufficient guarantee of the proper nature of any work which should appear before the public under his direction; and I might naturally have hoped that it would have guarded him from the suspicion of impropriety or indelicacy. In the present case, both his general character as a christian and a gentleman, and his particular connexion with the family of Lord Byron, should have prevented the alarm which appears to have been excited in your mind, for I will not suppose the relations of Lord Byron and my father to have participated in it;—an alarm which I must consider as unjustifiable as it is ungrounded.

“Since these causes have not had their proper effect in your mind, it becomes necessary for me, as my father’s representative and agent in the whole of this business, distinctly to state, that the forthcoming correspondence of the late Lord Byron contains nothing which one gentleman ought not to write, nor another gentleman to publish. The work will speedily speak for itself, and will show that my father’s object has been to place the original character of Lord Byron’s mind in its true light, to show the much of good that was in it; and the work leaves him when the good became obscured in the much of evil that I fear afterwards pre-
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dominated. There is no man on earth, Sir, who loved Lord Byron more truly, or was more jealous for his fair fame, than my father, as long as there was a possibility of his fame being fair; and though that possibility ceased, the affection remained, and will be evinced by the forthcoming endeavour to show that there existed in Lord Byron that which good men might have loved.

“As to any fear for the character of others who may be mentioned in the work, my father, Sir, is incapable of publishing personalities; and Lord Byron, at the time he corresponded with my father, was, I believe, incapable of writing what ought not to be published. If, at any subsequent period, in corresponding with others, he should have degraded himself to do so, I trust that his correspondents will be wise enough to abstain from making public what ought never to have been written.

“The letters which Lord Byron wrote to his mother were given by him unreservedly to my father, in a manner which seemed to have reference to their future publication; but which certainly rendered them my father’s property, to dispose of in what way he might think fit. Should you think it necessary to resort to any measures to obtain further proof of this, it will only tend to the more public establishing of the authenticity of these letters, and can only be considered as a matter of dispute of property, as Lord Byron’s best friends cannot but wish them published.

“Being charged by my father with the entire arrangement of this publication, you may have occasion to write to me; it may therefore be right to inform you that I have long since left the profession in which I was
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT xviii
engaged when we met at Cadiz; and, having taken orders, I have the ministerial charge of this parish; to which letters may be directed as this is dated.

“I remain,
“Your obedient Servant,
“Alex. R. C. Dallas.”