“Weep, daughter of a Royal line,
A Sire’s disgrace, a realm’s decay;
Ah! happy! if each tear of thine
Could wash a father’s fault away!
Weep—for thy tears are Virtue’s tears—
Auspicious to these suffering isles;
And be each drop, in future years,
Repaid thee by thy people’s smiles.”
The poem refers to an incident which had taken place at Carlton House a few days before, when the Princess Charlotte had burst into tears on learning that her royal father was intending to desert his Whig adherents. No one, apparently, suspected that Byron was the author; but in the second edition of the Corsair (February, 1814) the verses appeared as Lines to a Lady Weeping, publicly avowed by him. His acknowledgment brought upon him a storm of abuse from Tory papers—the Courier, the Morning Post, and the Sun—and a discussion ensued entirely out of proportion to the merit of the epigram which had excited it.[154] “How odd,” wrote Byron to Murray, “that eight lines should have given birth, I really think, to eight thousand.”[155] It is probable that no single production of Byron’s aroused more hostile comment at the time of its appearance.
Byron’s attitude towards the Regent at this period exposes him to a charge of double-dealing. In June, 1812, three months after the composition of the epigram, he met the Prince at a ball in an interview in which the two men conversed on Scott and his poetry. In relating the talk to Scott, Byron mentions that the Regent’s opinions were conveyed “with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to manners, certainly superior to those of any living gentleman.”[156] It is probable that Byron was a little flattered by the Prince’s condescension; but his own tactlessness in acknowledging his epigram prevented any further intercourse, and he subsequently became the Regent’s open enemy.