is the only apology given by Moore and
Murray for this poem, which gentle Thomas Moore admits was not in quite
as generous a strain as the 'Fare thee well.'

But Lord Byron knew perfectly well, when he suffered that application to
be made, that Lady Byron had been entirely convinced that her marriage
relations with him could never be renewed, and that duty both to man and
God required her to separate from him. The allowing the negotiation was,
therefore, an artifice to place his wife before the public in the
attitude of a hard-hearted, inflexible woman; her refusal was what he
knew beforehand must inevitably be the result, and merely gave him
capital in the sympathy of his friends, by which they should be brought
to tolerate and accept the bitter accusations of this poem.

We have recently heard it asserted that this last-named piece of poetry
was the sudden offspring of a fit of ill-temper, and was never intended
to be published at all. There were certainly excellent reasons why his
friends should have advised him not to publish it _at that time_. But
that it was read with sympathy by the circle of his intimate friends, and
believed by them, is evident from the frequency with which allusions to
it occur in his confidential letters to them. {21}

About three months after, under date March 10, 1817, he writes to Moore:
'I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sables in public
imagination, more particularly since my moral ----- clove down my fame.'
Again to Murray in 1819, three years after, he says: 'I never hear
anything of Ada, the little Electra of Mycenae.'

Electra was the daughter of Clytemnestra, in the Greek poem, who lived to
condemn her wicked mother, and to call on her brother to avenge the
father. There was in this mention of Electra more than meets the ear.
Many passages in Lord Byron's poetry show that he intended to make this
daughter a future partisan against her mother, and explain the awful
words he is stated in Lady Anne Barnard's diary to have used when first
he looked on his little girl,--'What an instrument of torture I have
gained in you!'

In a letter to Lord Blessington, April 6, 1823, he says, speaking of Dr.
Parr:-- {22a}

'He did me the honour once to be a patron of mine, though a great
friend of the _other branch of the house of Atreus_, and the Greek
teacher, I believe, of my _moral_ Clytemnestra. I say _moral_ because
it is true, and is so useful to the v