No more than that. This _ex parte_ interpretation of a foolish conjugal quarrel of forty years before, admittedly untested by any demand for particulars, was absolutely the sole piece of testimony which Mrs. Stowe adduced when she set out to blast Byron's reputation. The rest of the book consists of pious and sentimental out-pourings, vulgar abuse of Byron, and equally vulgar eulogy of his wife; the two passages cited being the only passages material to the issue. There was nothing in writing for her to quote--no case which a respectable lawyer would have taken into Court--no case that would not have been laughed out of Court within five minutes if it had ever got so far. The tribunal of public opinion did, in fact, laugh the case out of Court at the time. It was "snowed under," partly by laughter, and partly by indignation and the British feeling in favour of fair play; and it remained so buried for nearly forty years. Biographers could afford to scout it as "monstrous" without troubling to confute it. Sir Leslie Stephen, in the "Dictionary of National Biography," treated it as an hallucination to which Lady Byron had fallen a victim through brooding over her grievances in solitude. One would be glad if one could still take that tone towards it; but Lord Lovelace has made it impossible to do so. Mrs. Stowe, as a mischief-making meddler, interfering with matters which did not concern her, and about which she was obviously very ill informed, had not even a _primâ facie_ title to be taken seriously. The case of Lord Lovelace was different. He was Byron's grandson and the custodian of Lady Byron's strong-box. He affected not merely to assert but to argue. He produced from the strong-box documents which he was pleased to call proofs. A good many people, not having seen them, probably still believe that they are proofs. They cannot be waived on one side like Mrs. Stowe's unsupported allegations, but must be dealt with; and the whole question of the charge which they are alleged to substantiate must, of course, be dealt with simultaneously.