These be perilous doctrines, surely! But how do those reflections apply to the case of Byron and his sister? The hypothesis may be something like this: Byron and his sister commit a deadly sin. They are found out, but their secret is kept by a select circle of their friends. They part, and never meet again in this world. The sin might have been forgiven, or at least condoned, if they had 'observed a law of their own'--in other words, 'gone on sinning.' Why? because 'societies secretly respect rebel lovers.' But these wretches had not the courage of their profligacy; they parted and sinned no more, therefore they were 'unrepentant hypocrites.' The 'heroism and sincerity of united fates and doom' was denied to them, and no one would ever have suspected them of such a crime, if Lady Byron and Lord Lovelace had not betrayed them. What pestilential rubbish! One wonders how a man of Lord Lovelace's undoubted ability could have sunk to bathos of that kind. 'Byron,' he tells us, 'was ready to sacrifice everything for Augusta, and to defy the world with her. If this _had not been prevented_ [the italics are ours], _he would have been a more poetical figure in history_ than as the author of "Manfred."' It is clear, then, that in Lord Lovelace's opinion Byron and Augusta were prevented by someone from becoming poetical figures. Who was that guardian angel? Lady Byron, of course! Now, what are the facts? Byron parted from his sister on April 14, 1816, _nine days prior to his own departure from London_. They never met again. There was nothing to 'prevent' them from being together up to the last moment if they had felt so disposed. Byron never disguised his deep and lasting affection for Augusta, whom in private he called his 'Dear Goose,' and in public his 'Sweet Sister.' There was no hypocrisy on either side--nothing, in short, except the prurient imagination of a distracted wife, aided and abetted by a circle of fawning gossips. It is a lamentable example of how public opinion may be misdirected by evidence, which Horace would have called _Parthis mendacior_. Lord Lovelace comforts himself by the reflection that Augusta 'was not spared misery or degradation by being preserved from flagrant acts; for nothing could be more wretched than her subsequent existence; and far from growing virtuous, she went farther down without end temporally and spiritually.' Now, that is very strange! How could Augusta have gone farther down spiritually after Byron's departure? According to Lord Lovelace, 'Character regained was the consummation of Mrs. Leigh's ruin!' Mrs. Leigh must have been totally unlike anyone else, if character regained proved her ruin. There must be some mistake. No, there it is in black and white. 'Her return to outward respectability was an unmixed misfortune to the third person through whose protection it was possible.'