Byron was fascinated by the in-between, and his gaze was often drawn to bits of reality that the fabric of language doesn't quite cover: ‘And then his former movements would redouble / With something between carelessness and trouble’ (The Island, III, 4, 115–16). This sense that there are bits of reality that incorrigibly slip between the cracks of language is signalled by those features of the poet's manner – such as his lack of polish, his indifference to grammar, the ‘forwardness’ or ‘galloping nature’ of his rhetoric – which create the impression of language in pursuit of something. it is also apparent in his notorious tolerance of self-contradiction: ‘But if a writer should be quite consistent, / How could he possibly show things existent?’ (DJ, XV, 87). There are, however, certain bits of reality in particular that give language the slip, since they stray outside or play between our either/or ontological categories. This kind of ‘ontological trespassing’ has been brought into focus by the work of Jacques Derrida, who has identified the in-between as a form of spectrality and proposed an alternative ‘hauntological’ grammar to describe its shadowy comings and goings. This alternative economy of the spectral is helpfully summarized by Mary-Jane Rubenstein: