Unfortunately these statements were usually damned with a "but" or "yet." While it is now generally believed that many of the accusations made by Hunt were true,[437] inasmuch as they are confirmed in large part by contemporary evidence, and as truthfulness was one of Hunt's dominant traits, yet, on the other hand, it is quite necessary to make large allowance for the point of view and the color given by prejudice and bitterness of spirit. That Hunt told only the truth does not justify the injury in the slightest, for he had slept under Byron's roof and eaten of his bread. The obligations conferred were not exactly those of benefactor to suppliant; they were perhaps no more than Hunt's due in the light of the responsibility voluntarily assumed by Byron; yet they could not be destroyed or forgotten because of a refusal to acknowledge them. Worse still, Hunt's motives proceeded from impecuniosity and revenge. Such petty gossip of private affairs was worthy of a smaller and meaner soul. That Hunt did not have the sanction of his own judgment and conscience is clearly seen in the preface to the first edition where he confesses an unwilling hand and gives as a reason for the change of scheme a too long holiday taken after the advance of money from Colburn. He says that the book would never have been written at all, or consigned to the flames when finished, if he could have repaid the money.[438] His one poor defense is that "Byron talked freely of me and mine," that the public had talked, and that Byron knew how he felt.[439] The book had a very large circulation. But Hunt, who had hoped to defend himself in this manner from the calumnies afloat since the failure of _The Liberal_, brought down a storm of abuse from the press that resulted in his degradation and Byron's canonization. Moore's welcome was a poem, _The Living Dog and the Dead Lion_.[440] Hunt's friends replied with _The Giant and the Dwarf_.[441] In his life of Byron published some years later, Moore speaks reservedly of the book, merely saying it had sunk into deserved oblivion.[442] Hunt's public apology and reparation, in so far as such lay in his power, were first made in 1847 in _A Saunter Through the West End_: "No. 140 (formerly No. 13 of what was Piccadilly Terrace) was the last house which Byron inhabited in England. Nobody needs to be told what a great wit and fine poet he was: but everybody does not know that he was by nature a genial and generous man spoiled by the most untoward circumstances in early life. He vexed his enemies, and sometimes his friends; but his very advantages have been hard upon him, and subjected him to all sorts of temptations. May peace rest upon his infirmities, and his fame brighten as it advances."[443] In 1848, he wrote in praise of the Ave Maria stanza in _Don Juan_.[444] And finally and completely in his _Autobiography_ he apologized for the heat and venom of _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_: