And here’s exactly what ’tis worth.”
In September, 1816, when he was in Switzerland, he wrote the Lines on Hearing that Lady Byron Was Ill, in which he fairly gloats over her in her sickness. No one can mistake the meaning of the line,
“I have had many foes, but none like thee,”
or of the charge,
“Of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,
Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,
For present anger and for future gold.”
These stanzas, however, were not printed until 1832. In the meantime Byron had continued the attack on his wife in Childe Harold, III, 117, and IV, 130–138, in Don Juan, and in an occasional short epigram sent to friends in England. There can be no doubt that as the years went by and his attempts at reconciliation were thwarted, he grew thoroughly embittered against her.
Byron’s habits of thought were so frequently satirical that it was natural for him to introduce satire even into poems which were obviously of a different character. In his preface to Childe Harold he announced his intention of following Beattie in giving full rein to his inclination, and being “either droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender or satirical” as the mood came to him. In that poem the moralizing and didactic elements often closely approach satire, and there are some passages of genuine invective, a few of which have already been indicated.
In the first canto a visit to Cintra leads Byron into an indictment of the Convention of Cintra (1808), signed by Kellerman and Wellesley, by the terms of which the French troops in Portugal were permitted to evacuate with artillery, cavalry, and equipment. This agreement was regarded by the home officials as equivalent to treason, and the men responsible were subjected to some rigorous criticism. Byron took the popular side of the question in saying,