In an article entitled, "Did Byron write _Werner_?" which appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_ (August, 1899, vol. 46, pp. 243-250), the Hon. F. Leveson Gower undertakes to prove that _Werner_ was not written by Lord Byron, but by Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (born June 9, 1757, died March 30, 1806). He adduces, in support of this claim, (1) a statement made to him by his sister, the late Lady Georgiana Fullerton, to the effect that their grandmother, the duchess, "wrote the poem and gave the MS. to her niece, Lady Caroline Ponsonby (better known as Lady Caroline Lamb), and that she, some years later, handed it over to Lord Byron, who, in 1822, published it in his own name;" (2) a letter written in 1822 by his mother, Lady Granville, to her sister, Lady Carlisle, which asserts that their mother, the duchess, "wrote an entire tragedy from Miss Lee's _Kreutzner the Hungarian_ (_sic_)," and that the MS. had been sent to her by Lady Caroline's brother, Mr. William Ponsonby, and was in her possession; (3) another letter of Lady Granville's, dated December 3, 1822, in which she informs her sister that her husband, Lord Granville, had promised to read _Werner_ aloud to her (i.e. Byron's _Werner_, published November 23, 1822), a promise which, if fulfilled, must have revealed one of two things--the existence of two dramas based on Miss Lee's _Kruitzner_, or the identity of Byron's version with that of the duchess. Now, argues Mr. Leveson Gower, if Lady Granville had known that two dramas were in existence, she would not have allowed her daughter, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, to believe "that the duchess was the author of the published poem." I will deal with the external evidence first. Practically it amounts to this: (1) that Lady Granville knew that her mother, the Duchess of Devonshire, dramatized Miss Lee's _Kruitzner_; and (2) that Lady Georgiana Fullerton believed that the duchess gave the MS. of her play to Lady Caroline Ponsonby, and that, many years after, Lady Caroline handed it over to Byron. The external evidence establishes the fact that the Duchess of Devonshire dramatized _Kruitzner_, but it does not prove that Byron purloined her adaptation. It records an unverified impression on the part of the duchess's granddaughter, that the MS. of a play written between the years 1801-1806, passed into Byron's hands about the year 1813; that he took a copy of the MS.; and that in 1821-22 he caused his copy to be retranscribed and published under his own name. But Mr. Leveson Gower appeals to internal as well as external evidence, (1) He regards the great inferiority of _Werner_ to Byron's published plays, and to the genuine (hitherto) unpublished first act, together with the wholesale plagiarisms from Miss Lee's story, as an additional proof that the work was none of his. (2) He notes, as a suspicious circumstance, that "while the rough copies of his other poems have been preserved, no rough copy of _Werner_ is to be found."