irtuous, that it enables them to
do anything without the aid of an AEgistheus.'

If Lord Byron wrote this poem merely in a momentary fit of spleen, why
were there so many persons evidently quite familiar with his allusions to
it? and why was it preserved in Murray's hands? and why published after
his death? That Byron was in the habit of reposing documents in the
hands of Murray, to be used as occasion offered, is evident from a part
of a note written by him to Murray respecting some verses so intrusted:
'Pray let not these _versiculi_ go forth with my name except _to the
initiated_.' {22b}

Murray, in publishing this attack on his wife after Lord Byron's death,
showed that he believed in it, and, so believing, deemed Lady Byron a
woman whose widowed state deserved neither sympathy nor delicacy of
treatment. At a time when every sentiment in the heart of the most
deeply wronged woman would forbid her appearing to justify herself from
such cruel slander of a dead husband, an honest, kind-hearted, worthy
Englishman actually thought it right and proper to give these lines to
her eyes and the eyes of all the reading world. Nothing can show more
plainly what this poem was written for, and how thoroughly it did its
work! Considering Byron as a wronged man, Murray thought he was
contributing his mite towards doing him justice. His editor prefaced the
whole set of 'Domestic Pieces' with the following statements:--

'They all refer to the unhappy separation, of which the precise causes
are still a mystery, and which he declared to the last were never
disclosed to himself. He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments,
disordered health, and dislike to family restraints had aggravated his
naturally violent temper, and driven him to excesses. He suspected
that his mother-in-law had fomented the discord,--which Lady Byron
denies,--and that more was due to the malignant offices of a female
dependant, who is the subject of the bitterly satirical sketch.

* * * *

'To these general statements can only be added the still vaguer
allegations of Lady Byron, that she conceived his conduct to be the
result of insanity,--that, the physician pronouncing him responsible
for his actions, she could submit to them no longer, and that Dr.
Lushington, her legal adviser, agreed that a reconciliation was
neither proper nor possible. _No weight can be attached to the