774 



BYRON. 



him from being consigned, by public opinion, to a 

 life of seclusion ami obscurity. Captain B., the port's 

 father, was ><> dissipated, that he obtained the name 

 of the mad Jack Byron. He was one of the liaiul- 

 Mimvst men of his day, but so immersed in all the 

 fashionable vices, that, nt length, to be seen in his 

 company was deemed discreditable. In his 27th 

 year, he seduced Amelia, mnrcliioness of Carmarthen, 

 daughter of the earl of Holdernesse, to whom, on a 

 divorce following, he was united in marriage. This 

 ceremony the ill fated lady did not survive more than 

 two years, when he took, for a second wife, Miss 

 (onion, the heiress of the old Highland house of 

 (iight and Gordon, whose fortune he quickly dissi- 

 pated, leaving her a destitute widow, in 1791, with a 

 son, the celebrated subject of this article, then only 

 three years of age. Previously to the death of her 

 husband, having been deserted by him, Mrs B. re- 

 tired with her infant son, to her native place, Aber- 

 deen, where she lived in narrow circumstances and 

 great seclusion. The singular circumstances at- 

 tendant upon the early childhood of B. seem to 

 have operated very materially in the formation of 

 his very striking character. Until seven years of 

 age, the care of his education rested solely on his 

 mother, to whose excusable, but injudicious indul- 

 gence, some of the waywardness, by which it was 

 subsequently marked, was, even by himself, attri- 

 buted. Being then of a weakly constitution, that 

 disadvantage, added to a slight raalcon formation in 

 one of his reel, naturally rendered him an object of 

 peculiar solicitude ; and, to invigorate his constitution, 

 he was not sent to school, but allowed to brace his 

 limbs upon the mountains in the neighbourhood ; 

 where he early acquired associations, and encountered 

 a mass of legendary lore, which indisputably nurtured 

 his poetical tendencies. At the age of seven, he was 

 sent to the grammar-school at Aberdeen, where he 

 was more distinguished for great occasional exertions, 

 in order to make up for the intervals of absence, 

 rendered necessary by his delicacy of health, than by 

 his general application. In all boyish sports, how* 

 ever, the ardour of his temperament enabled him to 

 surmount his natural disadvantages. In 1798, the 

 death of his great uncle, without issue, gave him the 

 titles and estates of the family ; on which, being then 

 ten years of age, he was removed from the immediate 

 care of his mother, and placed under the guardianship 

 of the earl of Carlisle, who had married the sister of 

 the late lord Byron, a lady of considerable poetical 

 abilities. On this change, the youthful lord was 

 placed at Harrow, where he distinguished himself 

 more by his love of manly sports, and by his un- 

 daunted spirit, than by attention to his studies, or 

 submission to school discipline; but, although in a 

 subsequent part of his life, he indulged in some ani- 

 madversions upon the tendency of the system in public 

 schools, he always cherished an affectionate remem- 

 brance of Harrow, and of its master, doctor Drury. 

 While yet at school, he fell deeply in love with Miss 

 Chaworth, the daughter and heiress of the gentleman 

 who had fallen by the hand of his great uncle, whom 

 he met with on his occasional visits to Newstead. 

 This lady, to whom he very beautifully alludes in a 

 well-known poetical Dream, although some inter- 

 views and billets seem to have passed between them, 

 ultimately married another and more mature suitor. 

 This disappointment exceedingly wounded the ardent 

 spirit of the youthful lover. When between sixteen 

 and seventeen, he was entered of Trinity college, 

 Cambridge ; and here, as at Harrow, his dislike of 

 discipline drew upon him much unavoidable rebuke, 

 which he -repaid with sarcasm and satire ; and, among 

 other practical jokes, kept a bear, which, he observed, 

 he was training up for a degree. At nineteen, he 



quitted the university, and took up his residence at 

 the family seat of Newstead abbey, where he employed 

 himself chiefly in amusement, and especially in iii|uaiic 

 sports and swimming. In 1807, while still at New- 

 stead, he arranged his early productions, which he 

 caused to be printed at Newark, under the title of 

 Hours of Idleness, by George Gordon Lord Byron, a 

 Minor. These poems, although exhibiting soni 

 indication of the future poet, also betrayed several 

 marks of juvenility and imitation, which induced tli- 

 Edinburgh reviewers to indulge in an attack, much 

 less distinguished for wit or acumen, than for nun a- 

 sonable causticity and ill nature. The -ridicule pro - 

 duced by this critique roused the anger of the poet, 

 who took revenge in his celebrated satire of English 

 Bards and Scotch Reviewers. The spirit of resent- 

 ment is seldom very just; and the anger, rather than 

 the judgment of Byron, guided his pen on this 

 occasion. It happened, too, singularly enough, that, 

 owing to party and other predilections, a number of 

 the persons satirized in this poem, no long time after, 

 were numbered among the friends of the author ; for 

 which reason, after it had passed through four editions, 

 he suppressed it. It is unpleasant to relate, that, 

 about this time, Byron gave into a career of dissipa- 

 tion, too prevalent among the youthful possessors of 

 rank and fortune, when altogether uncontrolled. 

 Thus his fortune became deeply involved before he 

 had attained legal maturity, and his constitution much 

 impaired by the excesses in which he spent it. This, 

 however, was not a course to last; and, in the year 

 1809, he determined to travel. Accordingly, in 

 company with his fellow collegian, John Cam Hob- 

 house, Esq., he embarked at Falmouth for Lisbon, 

 and proceeded through the southern provinces of 

 Spain to the Mediterranean. His subsequent pere- 

 grinations in Greece, Turkey, &c., need not be 

 detailed here, having been rendered so famous by 

 his fine poem of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. He 

 returned home in June, 1811, after an absence of two 

 years, and had not long arrived, before he was sum- 

 moned to Newstead, in consequence of the dangerous 

 illness of his mother, who breathed her last before he 

 could reach her. 



In 1812, Byron gave to the world the first two can- 

 tos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. This assumption 

 of the character of a wayward libertine, satiated by an 

 over cultivation of pleasure, into misanthropy, tedium, 

 and listlessness, and that in such a manner, that the 

 application would necessarily be made to himself, 

 afforded proof both of the perverted feeling and of 

 the originality of Byron. There was, however, a 

 boldness in the repulsive personification, and a force 

 and an energy in the mode of supporting it, so indi- 

 cative of great powers, that it at once produced its 

 impression. Eulogy now flowed in from all quarters. 

 Even the readers who disapproved the misanthropy 

 and sombre views of human nature, displayed in this 

 extraordinary production, confessed its genius. Thus 

 the feelings of admiration became general, and, the 

 strong current of fashion turning directly in his favour, 

 his acquaintance was widely, not to say universally, 

 courted ; and his first entry on the stage of public 

 life may be dated from this era. Nor were the man- 

 ners, person, and conversation of Byron of a nature 

 to dissipate the charm with which his talents had 

 invested him. Although easy and affable in his 

 general manners, the latent reserve of conscious ge- 

 nius was always observable; added to which, the 

 associations connected with his identification with his 

 own Childe Harold excited a mysterious and unde- 

 finable curiosity. Even his physiognomy was emi- 

 nently calculated to keep up the interest which he 

 otherwise inspired ; the predominating expression of 

 ,his fine features being that of deep and habitual 



