From different incidental expressions in his correspondence it is sufficiently evident that Byron, before his marriage, intended to reside abroad.  In his letter to me of the 11th December, 1813, he distinctly states this intention, and intimates that he then thought of establishing his home in Greece.  It is not therefore surprising that, after his separation from Lady Byron, he should have determined to carry this intention into effect; for at that period, besides the calumny heaped upon him from all quarters, the embarrassment of his affairs, and the retaliatory satire, all tended to force him into exile; he had no longer any particular tie to bind him to England.

On the 25th of April, 1816, he sailed for Ostend, and resumed the composition of Childe Harold, it may be said, from the moment of his embarkation.  In it, however, there is no longer the fiction of an imaginary character stalking like a shadow amid his descriptions and reflections——­he comes more decidedly forwards as the hero in his own person.

In passing to Brussels he visited the field of Waterloo, and the slight sketch which he has given in the poem of that eventful conflict is still the finest which has yet been written on the subject.

But the note of his visit to the field is of more importance to my present purpose, inasmuch as it tends to illustrate the querulous state of his own mind at the time.

“I went on horseback twice over the field, comparing it with my recollection of similar scenes.  As a plain, Waterloo seems marked out for the scene of some great action, though this may be mere imagination.  I have viewed with attention those of Platea, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Chaevronae, and Marathon, and the field round Mont St Jean and Hugoumont appears to want little but a better cause and that indefinable but impressive halo which the lapse of ages throws around a celebrated spot, to vie in interest with any or all of these, except perhaps the last-mentioned.”

The expression “a better cause,” could only have been engendered in mere waywardness; but throughout his reflections at this period a peevish ill-will towards England is often manifested, as if he sought to attract attention by exasperating the national pride; that pride which he secretly flattered himself was to be augmented by his own fame.

I cannot, in tracing his travels through the third canto, test the accuracy of his descriptions as in the former two; but as they are all drawn from actual views they have the same vivid individuality impressed upon them.  Nothing can be more simple and affecting than the following picture, nor less likely to be an imaginary scene: 

   By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground,
   There is a small and simple pyramid,
   Crowning the summit of the verdant mound;
   Beneath its base are heroes’ ashes hid,
   Our enemies.  And let not that forbid
   Honour to Marceau, o’er whose early tomb
   Tears, big tears, rush’d from the rough soldier’s lid,
   Lamenting and yet envying such a doom,
Falling for France, whose rights he battled to resume.