Speaking of Byron's carelessness in exposing his friends' secrets, and showing or giving away their letters, he says,-- 'If his five hundred confidants, by a reticence as remarkable as his laxity, had not kept his secrets better than he did himself, the very devil might have been played with I don't know how many people.

But there was always this saving reflection to be made, that the man who could be guilty of such extravagances for the sake of making an impression might be guilty of exaggeration, or inventing what astonished you; and indeed, though he was a speaker of the truth on ordinary occasions,--that is to say, he did not tell you he had seen a dozen horses when he had seen only two,--yet, as he professed not to value the truth when in the way of his advantage (and there was nothing he thought more to his advantage than making you stare at him), the persons who were liable to suffer from his incontinence had all the right in the world to the benefit of this consideration.' {205a} With a person of such mental and moral habits as to truth, the inquiry always must be, Where does mystification end, and truth begin?
If a man is careless about his father's reputation for sanity, and reports him a crazy suicide; if he gaily accuses his publisher and good friend of double-dealing, shuffling, and dishonesty; if he tells stories about Mrs.Clermont, {205b} to which his sister offers a public refutation,--is it to be supposed that he will always tell the truth about his wife, when the world is pressing him hard, and every instinct of self-defence is on the alert?
And then the ingenuity that could write and publish false documents about himself, that they might reappear in London papers,--to what other accounts might it not be turned?
Might it not create documents, invent statements, about his wife as well as himself?
The document so ostentatiously given to M.G.Lewis 'for circulation among friends in England' was a specimen of what the Noctes Club would call 'bamming.' If Byron wanted a legal investigation, why did he not take it in the first place, instead of signing the separation?
If he wanted to cancel it, as he said in this document, why did he not go to London, and enter a suit for the restitution of conjugal rights, or a suit in chancery to get possession of his daughter?
That this was in his mind, passages in Medwin's 'Conversations' show.

He told Lady Blessington also that he might claim his daughter in chancery at any time.
Why did he not do it?
Either of these two steps would have brought on that public investigation he so longed for.

Can it be possible that all the friends who passed this private document from hand to hand never suspected that they were being 'bammed' by it?
But it has been universally assumed, that, though Byron was thus remarkably given to mystification, yet all his statements in regard to this story are to be accepted, simply because he makes them.

Why must we accept them, any more than his statements as to Murray or his own father?
So we constantly find Lord Byron's incidental statements coming in collision with those of others: for example, in his account of his marriage, he tells Medwin that Lady Byron's maid was put between his bride and himself, on the same seat, in the wedding journey.