ed
such.'

Lord Byron, his publishers, friends, and biographers, thus agree in
representing his wife as the secret author and abettor of that
persecution, which it is claimed broke up his life, and was the source of
all his subsequent crimes and excesses.

Lord Byron wrote a poem in September 1816, in Switzerland, just after the
separation, in which he stated, in so many words, these accusations
against his wife. Shortly after the poet's death Murray published this
poem, together with the 'Fare thee well,' and the lines to his sister,
under the title of 'Domestic Pieces,' in his standard edition of Byron's
poetry. It is to be remarked, then, that this was for some time a
private document, shown to confidential friends, and made use of
judiciously, as readers or listeners to his story were able to bear it.
Lady Byron then had a strong party in England. Sir Samuel Romilly and
Dr. Lushington were her counsel. Lady Byron's parents were living, and
the appearance in the public prints of such a piece as this would have
brought down an aggravated storm of public indignation.

For the general public such documents as the 'Fare thee well' were
circulating in England, and he frankly confessed his wife's virtues and
his own sins to Madame de Stael and others in Switzerland, declaring
himself in the wrong, sensible of his errors, and longing to cast himself
at the feet of that serene perfection,

'Which wanted one sweet weakness--to forgive.'

But a little later he drew for his private partisans this bitter poetical
indictment against her, which, as we have said, was used discreetly
during his life, and published after his death.

Before we proceed to lay that poem before the reader we will refresh his
memory with some particulars of the tragedy of AEschylus, which Lord
Byron selected as the exact parallel and proper illustration of his
wife's treatment of himself. In his letters and journals he often
alludes to her as Clytemnestra, and the allusion has run the round of a
thousand American papers lately, and been read by a thousand good honest
people, who had no very clear idea who Clytemnestra was, and what she did
which was like the proceedings of Lady Byron. According to the tragedy,
Clytemnestra secretly hates her husband Agamemnon, whom she professes to
love, and wishes to put him out of the way that she may marry her lover,
AEgistheus. When her husband returns from the Trojan war she receives
him with pret