I should have felt warranted in giving some intelligible account of the poet’s infelicities at home were it only to lead up to this exhibit of his wondrous literary skill; but I find still stronger reasons in the fact that the hue and cry which followed upon his separation from his wife seemed to exalt the man to an insolent bravado, and a challenge of all restraint--under which his genius flamed up with new power, and with a blighting splendor. _Exile._ It was on the 25th of April, 1816 (he being then in his twenty-eighth year), that he bade England adieu forever, and among the tenderest of his leave-takings was that from his sister, who had vainly sought to make smooth the difficulties in his home, and who (until Lady Byron had fallen into the blindness of dotage) retained her utmost respect. I cannot forbear quoting two verses from a poem addressed to this devoted sister: “Though the rock of my last hope is shivered And its fragments are sunk in the wave, Though I feel that my soul is delivered To pain--it shall _not_ be its slave; There is many a pang to pursue me; They may crush--but they shall not contemn, They may torture, but shall not subdue me, ’Tis of _thee_ that I think--not of them. “From the wreck of the past, which hath perished, Thus much I at least may recall, It hath taught me that what I most cherished Deserved to be dearest of all; In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wide waste, there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing Which speaks to my spirit of _thee_.” Never was a man pelted away from his native shores with more anathemas; never one in whose favor so few appealing voices were heard. It was not so much a memory of his satirical thrusts, as a jealousy begotten by his late extraordinary successes, which had alienated nearly the whole literary fraternity. Only Rogers, Moore, and Scott were among the better known ones who had forgiven his petulant verse, and were openly apologetic and friendly; while such kind wishers as Lady Holland and Lady Jersey were half afraid to make a show of their sympathies. Creditors, too, of that burdened estate of his, had pushed their executions one upon another--in those days when his torments were most galling--into what was yet called with poor significance his home; only his title of peer, Moore tells us, at one date saved him from prison.