LORD BYRON. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON, was born in Holles Street, London, January 22, 1788. He was a grandson of the celebrated Commodore Byron. When he was two years old, his father, Captain John Byron, died, and his mother, Catherine Gordon of Gight, went with her little son to live at Aberdeen. The boy had a deformed foot, the mother was irritable and soured by the extravagance and dissipation of her husband, and Byron's childhood was none of the happiest. He began rhyming and falling in love at a very early age. He was but eight years old when he acknowledged an affection for Mary Duff; two or three years later he was in love with his cousin Margaret Parker, who died early; and his romantic attachment for Mary Chaworth began when he was fifteen. His first rhyme is said to have been suggested by the spectacle of himself and another lame boy on the street with their nurses: "See the twa laddies with the twa club feet, Gangin' up the high-street." At the age of ten he succeeded to the lordship, and his mother at once removed to the family-seat at Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, near the famous Sherwood Forest. Byron was then sent to school at Dulwich and Harrow, and entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1805. He had always been near the foot of his class, and it was hardly possible for him to be much of a student in the regular routine. But he read enormously, and was all the while testing his power of composition. He left the university at the end of two years without taking a degree. attacked. With all its dash and wit, it was an exceedingly boyish performance, and Byron afterward so regarded it. But it was spirited, and personal, and audacious; the public were captivated, and Byron at once became famous. Miss Chaworth, whom he first met at Nottingham in 1803, was his senior by two years. She was the heiress of Annesley, a large estate in the neighborhood. Her father had been killed in a duel by the preceding Lord Byron, great-uncle of the poet. It seemed as if a marriage between her and the youthful lord would heal a family feud and be in every way desir able. But the lady had two very good reasons for declining: she did not fancy Byron, and she was already engaged to another man. The poet has given the romantic version of this affair in "The Dream." How nearly it approaches the true version, no one can say. Byron took his seat in the House of Lords in 1809, but had already become misanthropic, and in July of that year he left England for a journey through the Spanish Peninsula, Greece, Turkey, and Italy, which occupied two years. This furnished the theme of his first great poem, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." While in Tur key he swam the Hellespont, to test the prob ability of the story of Leander. At Athens he met Theresa Macri, a young lady of great. beauty, daughter of the British vice-consul, who became famous as his "Maid of Athens." He returned to England in July, 1811, and on Feb. 29, 1812, the first two cantos of "Childe Harold " were published. Its immediate and great success gave rise to his celebrated saying, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." In the next four years he produced "The Giaour," "The Bride of Abydos," "The Corsair," "Lara," and "The Siege of Corinth." During this time he had been living a dissi At Cambridge several of his early poems were circulated in manuscript, and finally some of them were collected and printed in a small volume, of which the first copy was presented to Rev. John Becher. That gentleman criti-pated life in London, rapidly making himself cised the "luxuriousness of coloring" in one of the pieces, and thereupon Byron burned the entire impression, with the exception of Becher's copy and one other. A revised edition was printed at Newark in 1807, under the title of "Hours of Idleness." With possibly a very few exceptions, the poems were such as almost any young man of culture might have written. The volume was roughly handled, as a matter of course, by the Edinburgh Review. The impetuous author replied with "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," an indiscriminate satire in which almost everybody who was then before the British public either as poet or critic was VOL. II.-38 bankrupt and getting a reputation for partial insanity. It was hoped that all this had come to an end when, in January, 1815, he married a daughter of Sir Ralph Noel Milbanke. Exactly why this marriage was unhappy, is a moot point. It has been attributed to the haughtiness and bad temper of the wife, to the continued dissipation of the husband, to his impending bankruptcy, to natural incompatibility, etc., the probability being that all of these causes contributed to it. That there was any truth in the revolting scandal so needlessly resurrected by an American authoress a few years ago, nobody with the slightest knowledge of the rules of evidence can believe. There were causes enough for the separation, without resorting to an unnatural theory and violating at once every consideration of probability and every principle of fair play for the helpless dead whose own version of the miserable story had been destroyed. For, at the solicitation of Lady Byron's friends, Moore allowed Byron's manuscript autobiography to be burned. Their daughter Ada was born in December, 1815, and in the following January Lady Byron went home to her father's house, and refused to return. During that unhappy year, the house had been nine times in the possession of the bailiffs. The public, who of course were deeply interested in this domestic drama, very generally sided with the lady, and Byron found England too hot for him. He soon left the country, and never returned. He went first to Switzerland, and resided for six months near Geneva. There he wrote the third canto of "Childe Harold," and "The Prisoner of Chillon." The next year, 1817, he removed to Venice, where he wrote the fourth canto of "Childe Harold," 66 Manfred," "Lament of Tasso," and "Beppo." During the next three years he wrote several dramas and the first five cantos of "Don Juan." In Venice he first met Teresa Gamba, then seventeen years old and newly married to the Count Guiccioli, who was fifty-five. The intimacy which sprang up between them was tolerated if not actually encouraged by the Count, who was himself very fond of the famous Englishman. Byron followed them to Ravenna, where he became implicated in some political plots and in consequence removed in 1822 to Pisa. The Countess procured from the Pope a bill of separation from her husband, and rejoined her lover, with whom she lived until his departure for Greece in the summer of 1823. Byron had been deeply interested in the struggle of the Greeks for independence, and when the London Committee of Philhellenes asked him to take an active part in it, he enthusiastically accepted the invitation. In January, 1824, he landed at Missolonghi, where he found the military affairs of the Greeks in a dreadful state of disorder. He went to work vigorously to effect a proper organization, and achieved considerable success. But on the 9th of April he was overtaken by a shower, while on horseback, from which he took a heavy cold. Rheumatism and fever set in, and on the 19th he died. The Greeks begged for his heart, and sealed it in an urn, which in the confusion following the siege of Missolonghi was lost. His body was taken to England. Denied a place in Westminster Abbey, it was buried in the little church of Hucknall Torkard, near Newstead. Considered purely as a poetical genius, Byron's was the most powerful of modern times. What other has exhibited so wide a sweep of imagination, so sure a grasp of the traits of concrete humanity, so rapid a movement of execution? Refinement of poetic imagery, subtilty of poetic contemplation, depth of poetic phi losophy-these you may find in Tennyson and Wordsworth and Browning; but in reading Byron one feels a consciousness of being in the presence of a mighty rushing inspiration, which never falters, because it is forever sure of itself. CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. OH, thou! in Hellas deem'd of heavenly birth, II. Whilome in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth, Who ne in virtue's ways did take delight; But spent his days in riot most uncouth, And vex'd with mirth the drowsy ear of night. Ah, me! in sooth he was a shameless wight, Sore given to revel and ungodly glee; Few earthly things found favor in his sight Save concubines and carnal companie, And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree. III. Childe Harold was he hight :-but whence his name And lineage long, it suits me not to say; Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame, And had been glorious in another day: But one sad losel soils a name for aye, However mighty in the olden time: Nor all that heralds rake from coffin'd clay, Nor florid prose, nor honeyed lies of rhyme, Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime. IV. Childe Harold bask'd him in the noontide sun, Then loathed he in his native land to dwell, Which seem'd to him more lone than eremite's sad cell. V. For he through sin's long labyrinth had run, Nor made atonement when he did amiss, Had sigh'd to many, though he loved but one, And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his. Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss Had been pollution unto aught so chaste, Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss, And spoil her goodly lands to gilde his waste, Nor calm domestic peace had ever deign'd to taste. VI. And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart, woe, XI. His house, his home, his heritage, his lands, Might shake the saintship of an anchorite, And e'en for change of scene would seek the And traverse Paynim shores, and pass earth's shades below. VII. The Childe departed from his father's hall: Yet strength was pillar'd in each massy aisle. central line. XII. The sails were fill'd, and fair the light winds blew, And monks might deem their time was come And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept. agen, |