'Which wanted one sweet weakness--to forgive.'

But a little later he drew for his private partisans this bitter poetical
indictment against her, which, as we have said, was used discreetly
during his life, and published after his death.

Before we proceed to lay that poem before the reader we will refresh his
memory with some particulars of the tragedy of AEschylus, which Lord
Byron selected as the exact parallel and proper illustration of his
wife's treatment of himself. In his letters and journals he often
alludes to her as Clytemnestra, and the allusion has run the round of a
thousand American papers lately, and been read by a thousand good honest
people, who had no very clear idea who Clytemnestra was, and what she did
which was like the proceedings of Lady Byron. According to the tragedy,
Clytemnestra secretly hates her husband Agamemnon, whom she professes to
love, and wishes to put him out of the way that she may marry her lover,
AEgistheus. When her husband returns from the Trojan war she receives
him with pretended kindness, and officiously offers to serve him at the
bath. Inducing him to put on a garment, of which she had adroitly sewed
up the sleeves and neck so as to hamper the use of his arms, she gives
the signal to a concealed band of assassins, who rush upon him and stab
him. Clytemnestra is represented by AEschylus as grimly triumphing in
her success, which leaves her free to marry an adulterous paramour.

'I did it, too, in such a cunning wise,
That he could neither 'scape nor ward off doom.
I staked around his steps an endless net,
As for the fishes.'

In the piece entitled 'Lines on hearing Lady Byron is ill,' Lord Byron