No man, except,
perhaps, Philippe Egalite, was ever so contemned and hated; and until
his death he imagined himself to be a good man. In all that wild set
who disgraced England and disgraced human nature in those gay days of
Byron's youth, I can discover only one thoroughly manly and estimable
individual, and that was Gentleman Jackson, the boxer; yet, with such
a marvellously wide range of villainy to study, Byron never seems to
have observed one ethical fact of the deepest importance--a villain
never knows that he is villainous; if he did, he would cease to be a
villain.
Perhaps Byron's own peculiar disposition--his constitution--prevented
him from understanding the undoubted truth which I have stated. Like
all other men, he possessed a dual nature; there was bad in him and
good, and his force was such that the bad was very bad indeed, and the
good was as powerful in its way as the evil. During the brief time
that Byron employed in behaving as a bad man, his conduct reached
almost epic heights--or depths--of misdoing; but he never in his heart
seemed to recognise the fact that he had been a bad man. At any rate,
he was wrong; and the commonest knowledge of our wild world suffices
to show any reasoning man the gravity of the error propounded in my
quotation.
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