The class whom he was reviling seemed, however,
during "the day of his destiny," bent on confirming his judgment by the
blindness of their worship. His rank and fame, the glittering splendour of
his verse, the romance of his travels, his picturesque melancholy and
affectation of mysterious secrets, combined with the magic of his presence
to bewitch and bewilder them. The dissenting malcontents, condemned as
prudes and blues, had their revenge. Generally, we may say that women who
had not written books adored Byron; women who had written or were writing
books distrusted, disliked, and made him a moral to adorn their tales,
often to point their fables with. He was by the one set caressed and
spoilt, and "beguiled too long;" by the other, "betrayed too late." The
recent memoirs of Frances Ann Kemble present a curious record of the
process of passing from one extreme to the other. She dwells on the
fascination exerted over her mind by the first reading of his poetry, and
tells how she "fastened on the book with a grip like steel," and carried
it off and hid it under her pillow; how it affected her "like an evil
potion," and stirred her whole being with a tempest of excitement, till
finally she, with equal weakness, flung it aside, "resolved to read that
grand poetry no more, and broke through the thraldom of that powerful
spell.
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