It was not only, as Macaulay put it, that Byron was "singled out as an expiatory sacrifice" by the British public in a periodical fit of morality, but, as the extent and the limitations of the attack reveal, occasion was taken by political adversaries to inflict punishment for an outrage on popular sentiment. The Champion had been the first to give tongue, and the other journals, on the plea that the mischief was out, one after the other took up the cry. On Monday, April 15, the Sun printed Fare Thee Well, and on Tuesday, April 16, followed with A Sketch. On the same day the Morning Chronicle, protesting that "the poems were not written for the public eye, but as having been inserted in a Sunday paper," printed both sets of verses; the Morning Post, with an ugly hint that "the noble Lord gives us verses, when he dare not give us circumstances," restricted itself to Fare Thee Well; while the Times, in a leading paragraph, feigned to regard "the two extraordinary copies of verses . . . the whining stanzas of Fare Thee Well, and the low malignity and miserable doggerel of the companion Sketch, as "an injurious fabrication." On Thursday, the 18th, the Courier, though declining to insert A Sketch, deals temperately and sympathetically with the Fare Thee Well, and quotes the testimony of a "fair correspondent" (? Madame de Staël), that if "her husband had bade her such a farewell she could not have avoided running into his arms, and being reconciled immediately-'Je n'aurois pu m'y tenir un instant' ;" and on the same day the Times, having learnt to its "extreme astonishment and regret," that both poems were indeed Lord Byron's, maintained that the noble author had "degraded literature, and abused the privileges of rank, by converting them into weapons of vengeance against an inferior and a female.” On Friday, the 19th, the Star printed both poems, and the Morning Post inserted a criticism, which had already appeared in the Courier of the preceding day. On Saturday, the 20th, the Courier found itself compelled, in the interests of its readers, to print both poems. On Sunday, the 21st, the octave of the original issue, the Examiner devoted a long article to an apology for Byron, and a fierce rejoinder to the Champion; and on the same day the Independent Whig and the Sunday News, which favoured the "opposition," printed both poems, with prefatory notices more or less favourable to the writer; whereas the Tory Antigallican Monitor, which also printed both poems, added the significant remark that "if everything said of Lord Byron be true, it would appear that the Whigs were not altogether so immaculate as they themselves would wish the world to suppose." The testimony of the press is instructive from two points of view. In the first place, it tends to show that the controversy was conducted on party lines; and, secondly, that the editor of the Champion was in some degree responsible for the wide diffusion and lasting publicity of the scandal. The separation of Lord and Lady Byron must, in any case, have been more than a nine days' wonder, but if the circulation of the "pamphlet" had been strictly confined to the "initiated," the excitement and interest of the general public would have smouldered and died out for lack of material. In his second letter on Bowles, dated March 25, 1821 (Observations upon Observations, Life, 1892, p. 705), Byron alludes to the publication of these poems in the Champion, and comments on the behaviour of the editor, who had recently (February 16, 1821) been killed in a duel. He does not minimize the wrong, but he pays a fine and generous tribute to the courage and worth of his assailant. "Poor Scott is now no more lived an able one," etc. It may be added that Byron was an anonymous subscriber to a fund raised by Sir James Mackintosh, Murray, and others, for "the helpless family of a man of virtue and ability" (London Magazine, April, 1821, vol. iii. p. 359). .. he died like a brave man, and he For chronological reasons, and in accordance with the precedent of the edition of 1832, a third poem, Stanzas to Augusta, has been included in this group. POEMS OF THE SEPARATION. FARE THEE WELL.1 "Alas! they had been friends in youth; To free the hollow heart from paining- But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, The marks of that which once hath been." FARE thee well! and if for ever, Still for ever, fare thee well: i. The motto was prefixed in Poems, 1816. 1. ["He there (Byron, in his Memoranda) described, and in a manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, the swell of tender recollections, under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing in the study, these stanzas were produced, the tears, as he said, falling fast over the paper as he wrote them."-Life, p. 302. It must have been a fair and complete copy that Moore saw (see Life, p. 302, note 3). There are no tear-marks on this (the first draft, sold at Sotheby's, April 11, 1885) draft, which must be the Would that breast were bared before thee i Where thy head so oft hath lain, i. Though the world for this commend thee—1 i. Thou my breast laid bare before thee.—[MS. erased.] ii. Not a thought is pondering on thee.-[MS. erased.] first, for it is incomplete, and every line (almost) tortured with alterations. "Fare Thee Well!" was printed in Leigh Hunt's Examiner, April 21, 1816, at the end of an article (by L. H.) entitled “Distressing Circumstances in High Life." The text there has two readings different from that of the pamphlet, viz.— Examiner: "Than the soft one which embraced me." -MS. Notes taken by the late J. Dykes Campbell at Sotheby's, April 18, 1890, and re-transcribed for Mr. Murray, June 15, 1894. A final proof, dated April 7, 1816, was endorsed by Murray, "Correct 50 copies as early as you can to-morrow."] 1. [Lines 13-20 do not appear in an early copy dated March 18, 1816. They were added on the margin of a proof dated April 4, |