1830.] [ 183 ] 



MOORE'S NOTICES OF LOUD BYRON. 



ALL the world, talkers, readers, blue-stockings, and all, have long 

 since made up their minds about the subject of Mr. Moore's present 

 volume. That Byron was a great poet is unquestionable, and that, on 

 the strength of his poetic reputation, he was perfectly satisfied to build 

 reputations of any other kind, is equally clear. Not that he was a hair's 

 breath worse than nine-tenths of the decorous young gentlemen whom 

 we meet every day roving the fashionable streets; the only difference 

 being that his Lordship's taste for notoriety urged him into perpetual ex- 

 posure; while those young gentlemen drink, play, quarrel with their fami- 

 lies, ruin their tailors, make lawless love, and contract heartless mar- 

 riages ; but have the grace to keep the affair to themselves as much as they 

 can. Byron let out the secret without ceremony, exulted in telling the 

 world every unlucky circumstance about him, and perhaps was never 

 in higher self-applause than on the day when he had to divulge that he 

 had nine executions in his house, had separated from his wife, and had 

 fairly proclaimed war with mankind. 



All this, however, " argued a foregone conclusion," for, lover of ec- 

 centricities as a man may be, there are obvious inconveniences in their 

 pursuit which probably save the world from being often perplexed by 

 a career of this inveterate opposition to public tastes. Byron's parentage 

 may account for some portion of his propensities. His father was, by Mr, 

 Moore's account, a thorough scoundrel ; a base though showy profligate, 

 who, after spending all his patrimony in low excess, turned fortune-hun- 

 ter, and married a half-mad woman for her money. The detail of this 

 match is full of the Biographer's industry. It appears that Miss Cathe- 

 rine Gordon, of Gight, had about 20,000/. ; of which Captain Byron con- 

 trived to get rid in less than two years, reducing the Heiress of Gight to 

 an allowance of 150/. a year. There, unquestionably, too, was madness 

 in the line. Lord Byron's grand uncle, who was tried, in 1765, before 

 the Peers, for killing his cousin, Mr. Chaworth, in a duel, passed the 

 latter years of his life in an extraordinary seclusion, which was known 

 to be connected with lunacy. Other branches of the family were, if 

 less public, equally singular ; and, we must, in charity, suppose the same 

 excuse for Captain Byron, who began his career by carrying off and 

 marrying the wife of Lord Carmarthen, and whose progress through 

 life was only from one profligacy to another. His daughter, by, the 

 lady, was the Honourable Augusta Byron, subsequently married to 

 Colonel Leigh. 



The poet's mother was married in 1785 ; and he was born, in Holies- 

 street, London, on the 22nd of January, 1788. The head of the line 

 was in the De Buruns, of Normandy, who came over with the Conqueror, 

 and whose posterity inherited large estates in Nottinghamshire, Derby- 

 shire, and Lancashire. Mrs. Byron was a descendant from Sir William 

 Gordon, third son of the Earl of Huntley, by the daughter of James I. of 

 Scotland. 



Lord Byron made himself remarkable, at an early period, by his 

 irritability. The misery which a man inflicts on himself by this habit is 

 so much more severe than its offence to others, that it is only just, in 

 all such instances, to suspect some morbid cause. Byron had two or 

 three : he had a tendency to some disorder of the kidneys, than which a 

 more agonizing visitant when it comes, nor a more fretful fear when it 



