"Hopeless of peace below, and, shuddering thought! Far from that Heav'n, denied, if never sought, Thy light a beacon--a reproach thy name-- Thy memory "damn'd to everlasting fame," Shunn'd by the wise, admired by fools alone-- The good shall mourn thee--and the Muse disown." ] * * * * * LETTER 235. TO MR. ROGERS. "March 25. 1816. "You are one of the few persons with whom I have lived in what is called intimacy, and have heard me at times conversing on the untoward topic of my recent family disquietudes. Will you have the goodness to say to me at once, whether you ever heard me speak of her with disrespect, with unkindness, or defending myself at _her_ expense by any serious imputation of any description against _her_? Did you never hear me say 'that when there was a right or a wrong, she had the _right_?'--The reason I put these questions to you or others of my friends is, because I am said, by her and hers, to have resorted to such means of exculpation. "Ever very truly yours, "B." * * * * * In those Memoirs (or, more properly, Memoranda,) of the noble poet, which it was thought expedient, for various reasons, to sacrifice, he gave a detailed account of all the circumstances connected with his marriage, from the first proposal to the lady till his own departure, after the breach, from England. In truth, though the title of "Memoirs," which he himself sometimes gave to that manuscript, conveys the idea of a complete and regular piece of biography, it was to this particular portion of his life that the work was principally devoted; while the anecdotes, having reference to other parts of his career, not only occupied a very disproportionate space in its pages, but were most of them such as are found repeated in the various Journals and other MSS. he left behind. The chief charm, indeed, of that narrative, was the melancholy playfulness--melancholy, from the wounded feeling so visible through its pleasantry--with which events unimportant and persons uninteresting, in almost every respect but their connection with such a man's destiny, were detailed and described in it. Frank, as usual, throughout, in his avowal of his own errors, and generously just towards her who was his fellow-sufferer in the strife, the impression his recital left on the minds of all who perused it was, to say the least, favourable to him;--though, upon the whole, leading to a persuasion, which I have already intimated to be my own, that, neither in kind nor degree, did the causes of disunion between the parties much differ from those that loosen the links of most such marriages.