"The thorns which I have reaped," said he later (but he thought it much
earlier), "are of the tree I planted,--they have torn me,--and I bled; I
should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed."[182]

In addition to all this, Lord Byron had to experience the effects of a
phenomenon of a terrible character, a phenomenon almost peculiar to
England, the tyrannical power of its public opinion. This power, that
gives form and movement to what is called the great world in England,
weighed so heavily on the weak minds of several persons calling
themselves friends, that, with few exceptions, and though all the while
persuaded of the injustice of such opinion, after a few feeble efforts
at changing it, and showing the wrong done to Lord Byron, they lost
courage to declare their belief. Not only did they no longer protest,
but they even pretended to believe part of the stupid calumnies spread
abroad. To a heart firm and devoted as his, which, under similar
circumstances, would have fought to the death in defense of outraged
justice and a persecuted friend, this was one of the most cruel trials
imposed on him by adverse destiny. What he must have suffered at this
period has been already spoken of in another chapter. I will only say
here, that, despite time, and the philosophy, which, subsequently,
restored partial serenity, this wound never quite closed, since, even in
the fourteenth canto of "Don Juan," written shortly before his last
journey into Greece, he still made allusion to it, saying ironically:--

"Without a friend, what were humanity,
To hunt our errors up with a good grace?
Consoling us with--'Would you had thought twice!
Ah! if you had but followed my advice!'
O Job! you had but two friends: one's quite enough,
Especially when we are ill at ease."

Moore adds:--"Lord Byron could not have said, at this time, whether it
was the attacks of his enemies, or the condolences of his friends that
most lacerated his heart."

It was in this state of mind that he quitted England. He visited
Belgium, and its battle-plains, still coming across fields of blood;
went up the Rhine, and spent some months in Switzerland, where the
glaciers, precipices, and the Alps, presented him with a splendid
framework for new poems. All the melancholy to be found in "Childe
Harold" (third canto), in "Manfred," and in his memoranda at that time,
is evidently caused by grief, either of fresh occurrence or renewed by
mem