_A Sketch_, containing 104 lines in heroic couplets, is a coarse and scurrilous attack on Mrs. Clermont, beginning with a short account of her life, “Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred, Promoted thence to deck her mistress’ head,” and closing with a terrible imprecation, “May the strong curse of crush’d affections light Back on thy bosom with reflected blight! And make thee, in thy leprosy of mind, As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!” Perhaps no more savage satire was ever levelled at a woman; it is even more venomous than Pope’s assault on Lady Montagu in what Mr. Birrell calls “the most brutal lines ever written by man of woman.” Murray wrote Byron, after showing the satire to Rogers, Canning, and Frere:--“They have all seen and admired the lines; they agree that you have produced nothing better; that satire is your forte; and so in each class as you choose to adopt it.”[171] These men, however, were active supporters of Byron, and their praise seems extravagant. Whatever his provocation may have been--and it was probably great--Byron did not enhance his fame by this barbarous tirade. In the very midst of his anger the poet pauses in the poem to pay his wife a tribute and to assert his love for her; but not long after he turned to assail Lady Byron herself. Indeed he is said to have attached an epigram to the deed of separation, “A year ago you swore, fond she! ‘To love, to honour,’ and so forth: Such was the vow you pledged to me, 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.