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 of my curse.
That curse shall be forgiveness.

Have I not,-- Hear me, my Mother Earth! behold it, Heaven,-- Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, Hopes sapped, name blighted, life's life lied away, And only not to desperation driven, Because not altogether of such clay As rots into the soul of those whom I survey?
-- -------- 'From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy, Have I not seen what human things could do,-- From the loud roar of foaming calumny, To the small whispers of the paltry few, And subtler venom of the reptile crew, _The Janus glance of whose significant eye, Learning to lie with silence, would seem true, And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy_ ?' {31} The reader will please notice that the lines in italics are almost, word for word, a repetition of the lines in italics in the former poem on his wife, where he speaks of a _significant eye_ that has _learned to lie in silence_, and were evidently meant to apply to Lady Byron and her small circle of confidential friends.
Before this, in the Third Canto of 'Childe Harold,' he had claimed the sympathy of the world, as a loving father, deprived by a severe fate of the solace and society of his only child:-- 'My daughter,--with this name my song began,-- My daughter,--with this name my song shall end,-- I see thee not and hear thee not, but none Can be so wrapped in thee; thou art the friend To whom the shadows of far years extend.
* * * * 'To aid thy mind's developments, to watch The dawn of little joys, to sit and see Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch Knowledge of objects,--wonders yet to thee,-- And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss;-- This it should seem was not reserved for me.
Yet this was in my nature,--as it is, I know not what there is, yet something like to this.
-- -------- '_Yet though dull hate as duty should be taught_, I know that thou wilt love me; though my name Should be shut out from thee as spell still fraught With desolation and a broken claim, Though the grave close between us,--'t were the same I know that thou wilt love me, though to drain My blood from out thy being were an aim And an attainment,--all will be in vain.' To all these charges against her, sent all over the world in verses as eloquent as the English language is capable of, the wife replied nothing.
'Assailed by slander and the tongue of strife, Her only answer was,--a blameless life.' She had a few friends, a very few, with whom she sought solace and sympathy.

One letter from her, written at this time, preserved by accident, is the only authentic record of how the matter stood with her.
We regret to say that the publication of this document was not brought forth to clear Lady Byron's name from her husband's slanders, but to shield _him_ from the worst accusation against him, by showing that this crime was not included in the few private confidential revelations that friendship wrung from the young wife at this period.
Lady Anne Barnard, authoress of 'Auld Robin Grey,' a friend whose age and experience made her a proper confidante, sent for the broken-hearted, perplexed wife, and offered her a woman's sympathy.
To her Lady Byron wrote many letters, under seal of confidence, and Lady Anne says: 'I will give you a few paragraphs transcribed from one of Lady Byron's own letters to me.