This last view of the case certainly makes Lord Byron more unaccountably wicked than the other.
The first supposition shows him to us as a man in an agony of self-preservation; the second as a fiend, delighting in gratuitous deceit and cruelty.
Again: a presumption of this crime appears in Lord Byron's admission, in a letter to Moore, that he had an illegitimate child born before he left England, and still living at the time.
In letter 307, to Mr.Moore, under date Venice, Feb.

2, 1818, Byron says, speaking of Moore's loss of a child,-- 'I know how to feel with you, because I am quite wrapped up in my own children.

Besides my little legitimate, I have made unto myself an illegitimate since [since Ada's birth] to say nothing of one before; and I look forward to one of these as the pillar of my old age, supposing that I ever reach, as I hope I never shall, that desolating period.' The illegitimate child that he had made to himself since Ada's birth was Allegra, born about nine or ten months after the separation.

The other illegitimate alluded to was born before, and, as the reader sees, was spoken of as still living.
Moore appears to be puzzled to know who this child can be, and conjectures that it may possibly be the child referred to in an early poem, written, while a schoolboy of nineteen, at Harrow.
On turning back to the note referred to, we find two things: first, that the child there mentioned was not claimed by Lord Byron as his own, but that he asked his mother to care for it as belonging to a schoolmate now dead; second, that the infant died shortly after, and, consequently, could not be the child mentioned in this letter.
Now, besides this fact, that Lord Byron admitted a living illegitimate child born before Ada, we place this other fact, that there was a child in England which was believed to be his by those who had every opportunity of knowing.
On this subject we shall cite a passage from a letter recently received by us from England, and written by a person who appears well informed on the subject of his letter:-- 'The fact is, the incest was first committed, and the child of it born before, shortly before, the Byron marriage.

The child (a daughter) must not be confounded with the natural daughter of Lord Byron, born about a year after his separation.
'The history, more or less, of that child of incest, is known to many; for in Lady Byron's attempts to watch over her, and rescue her from ruin, she was compelled to employ various agents at different times.' This letter contains a full recognition, by an intelligent person in England, of a child corresponding well with Lord Byron's declaration of an illegitimate, born before he left England.
Up to this point, we have, then, the circumstantial evidence against Lord Byron as follows:-- A good and amiable woman, who had married him from love, determined to separate from him.
Two of the greatest lawyers of England confirmed her in this decision, and threatened Lord Byron, that, unless he consented to this, they would expose the evidence against him in a suit for divorce.