The reason of this may now be evident.  Having prepared a suitable number of those whom he calls in his notes to Murray ‘the initiated,’ by private documents and statements, he is now prepared to publish his accusations against his wife, and the story of his wrongs, in a great immortal poem, which shall have a band of initiated interpreters, shall be read through the civilised world, and stand to accuse her after his death.

In the Fourth Canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ with all his own overwhelming power of language, he sets forth his cause as against the silent woman who all this time had been making no party, and telling no story, and whom the world would therefore conclude to be silent because she had no answer to make.  I remember well the time when this poetry, so resounding in its music, so mournful, so apparently generous, filled my heart with a vague anguish of sorrow for the sufferer, and of indignation at the cold insensibility that had maddened him.  Thousands have felt the power of this great poem, which stands, and must stand to all time, a monument of what sacred and solemn powers God gave to this wicked man, and how vilely he abused this power as a weapon to slay the innocent.

It is among the ruins of ancient Rome that his voice breaks forth in solemn imprecation:—­

   ’O Time, thou beautifier of the dead,
   Adorner of the ruin, comforter,
   And only healer when the heart hath bled!—­
   Time, the corrector when our judgments err,
   The test of truth, love,—­sole philosopher,
   For all besides are sophists,—­from thy shrift
   That never loses, though it doth defer!—­
   Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
   My hands and heart and eyes, and claim of thee a gift.

* * * *

’If thou hast ever seen me too elate, Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne Good, and reserved my pride against the hate Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn This iron in my soul in vain, shall THEY not mourn?  And thou who never yet of human wrong Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis, Here where the ancients paid their worship long, Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss, And round Orestes bid them howl and hiss For that unnatural retribution,—­just Had it but come from hands less near,—­in this Thy former realm I call thee from the dust.  Dost thou not hear, my heart? awake thou shalt and must!  It is not that I may not have incurred For my ancestral faults and mine, the wound Wherewith I bleed withal, and had it been conferred With a just weapon it had flowed unbound, But now my blood shall not sink in the ground.

* * * *

   ’But in this page a record will I seek;
   Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
   Though I be ashes,—­a far hour shall wreak
   The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
   And pile on human heads the mountain