Mrs. Hall's novels have but little literary value, but she has brought to light Irish characteristics and Irish traditions which were overlooked by her predecessors, and for that reason they deserve to live. CHAPTER XII Lady Caroline Lamb. Mrs. Shelley It is impossible to comprehend the Byronic craze which swept cool-headed England off her feet during the regency. _Childe Harold_ was the fashion, and many a hero of romance, even down to the time of _Pendennis_, aped his fashions. Disraeli and Bulwer were among his disciples. Bulwer's early novels, _Falkland_ and _Pelham_, were influenced by him; and _Vivian Grey_ and _Venetia_ might have been the offspring of Byron's prose brain, so completely was Disraeli under his influence at the time. The poorest of the novels of this class, but the one which gives the most intimate picture of Byron, is _Glenarvon_, by Lady Caroline Lamb. Its hero is Byron. The plot follows the outlines of her own life, and all the characters were counterparts of living people whom she knew. Calantha, the heroine, representing Lady Caroline, is married to Lord Avondale, or William Lamb, better known as Lord Melbourne, at one time Premier of England. Lord and Lady Avondale are very happy, until Glenarvon, "the spirit of evil," appears and dazzles Calantha. Twice she is about to elope with him, but the thought of her husband and children keeps her back. They part, and for a time tender _billets-doux_ pass between them, until Calantha receives a cruel letter from Glenarvon, in which he bids her leave him in peace. Other well-known people appeared in the book. Lord Holland was the Great Nabob, Lady Holland was the Princess of Madagascar, and Samuel Rogers was the Yellow Hyena or the Pale Poet. The novel had also a moral purpose; it was intended to show the danger of a life devoted to pleasure and fashion. Of course the book made a sensation. Lady Caroline Lamb, the daughter of Earl Bessborough, the granddaughter of Earl Spencer, related to nearly all the great houses of England, had all her life followed every impulse of a too susceptible imagination. Her infatuation for Lord Byron had long been a theme for gossip throughout London. She invited him constantly to her home; went to assemblies in his carriage; and, if he were invited to parties to which she was not, walked the streets to meet him; she confided to every chance acquaintance that she was dying of love for him. Yet, as one reads of this affair, one suspects that this devotion was nothing more than the infatuation of a high-strung nature for the hero of a romance. In writing to a friend about her husband, she says, "He was privy to my affair with Lord Byron and laughed at it." On her death-bed she said of her husband, "But remember, the only noble fellow I ever met with was William Lamb." A month after her death, Lord Melbourne wrote a sketch of her life for the _Literary Gazette_. In this he said: