But the question met him on all sides, What is the matter? This wife you
have declared the brightest, sweetest, most amiable of beings, and
against whose behaviour as a wife you actually never had nor can have a
complaint to make,--why is she _now_ all of a sudden so inflexibly set
against you?

This question required an answer, and he answered by writing another
poem, which also _accidentally_ found its way into the public prints. It
is in his 'Domestic Pieces,' which the reader may refer to at the end of
this volume, and is called 'A Sketch.'

There was a most excellent, respectable, well-behaved Englishwoman, a
Mrs. Clermont, {16} who had been Lady Byron's governess in her youth, and
was still, in mature life, revered as her confidential friend. It
appears that this person had been with Lady Byron during a part of her
married life, especially the bitter hours of her lonely child-bed, when a
young wife so much needs a sympathetic friend. This Mrs. Clermont was
the person selected by Lord Byron at this time to be the scapegoat to
bear away the difficulties of the case into the wilderness.

We are informed in Moore's Life what a noble pride of rank Lord Byron
possessed, and how when the headmaster of a school, against whom he had a
pique, invited him to dinner, he declined, saying, 'To tell you the
truth, Doctor, if you should come to Newstead, I shouldn't think of
inviting _you_ to dine with _me_, and so I don't care to dine with you
here.' Different countries, it appears, have different standards as to
good taste; Moore gives this as an amusing instance of a young lord's
spirit.

Accordingly, his first attack against this 'lady,' as we Americans should