ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the subjects of candour, poetry and lying in a selection of Lord Byron's later writings. 'Truth' was a keyword for Romantics, carrying an almost unbearable weight at times, as in Keats's vatic claims for imagination and beauty, or in Shelley's pious assertions of poetry's veracity, or even Blake's staunch denials of truth in his marginalia and other writings. At one level Byron is playing the coy narrator, embarrassed by possibility of scandal and wary of making libellous remarks. At another he is reiterating the fear of lying: the poem's imperfect relation to the world might lead to its being untruthful. The nature of this ironic twist has further semantic implications, for of course by declining to say 'what might be related' the poem successfully, if vaguely, implies what this might be. For Byron, insincerity is not 'fair play': Bowles has it both ways by referring to scandalous evidence but claiming he is too honourable to reproduce it.
