The Byron controversy has been going on all the week
with very little result. There is a strong feeling that Mrs. Beecher Stowe had much better have held her tongue, that nothing has been gained by the revelation of a secret which will only impart a rather stronger flavour of the pit to Lord Byron's poems, without diminishing their circulation. That feeling finds expression else- where in our columns, but we are wholly unable to join in the con- troversy as to the matter of fact. Mrs. Beecher Stowe has not, in our judgment, shown proper discretion in her revelation, or proper
respect for Lady Byron's own wishes ; but it is quite clear that she has told, very badly, with some gross blunders and some wretched attempts at sensational writing, the truth, as Lady Byron believed it to be. That it was the truth, there is and can be no proof whatever until the data for Lady Byron's belief are made clear, and the good to be gained in making them clear is, to us, imper- ceptible. Why not leave the cesspool alone ?
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