BYRON 



1030 



BYRON 



wise indulgences and equally unwise severities 

 the waywardness that marked his after life 

 may have been partly due. On reaching his 

 seventh year he was sent to the grammar 

 school at Aberdeen, and four years after, in 

 1798, the death of his granduncle gave him 

 the titles and estates of the family. Mother 

 and son then removed to Newstead Abbey, 



GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON 



No one else except, perhaps, Wordsworth 

 who could write so well could also write so ill. 

 "I can never recast anything," he said ; "I am 

 like the tiger if I miss the first spring I go 

 grumbling back to my jungle." 



the family seat, near Nottingham. Soon after- 

 ward Byron was sent to Harrow, where he 

 distinguished himself by his unsystematic read- 

 ing, rather than by careful study. In athletic 

 sports he excelled, despite the lameness which 

 had resulted from a childish illness. In 1805 

 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. Two 

 years later appeared his first poetic volume, 

 Hours of Idleness, which was criticised with 

 unnecessary severity in the Edinburgh Review. 

 This criticism roused Byron and drew from 

 him his first really notable effort, the cele- 

 brated satire, English Bards and Scotch Re- 

 viewers. 



In 1809, in company with a friend, Byron 

 visited the southern provinces of Spain and 

 voyaged along the shores of the Mediterranean. 

 The result of these travels was Childe Har- 

 old's Pilgrimage, the first two books of which 

 were published on his return in 1812. The 

 poem was immediately successful, and Byron 

 "awoke one morning and found himself fa- 

 mous." During the next two years The Giaour, 



The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair and Lara 

 appeared, and Byron's literary reputation grow 

 steadily. 



During these years, however, he was living 

 in the most reckless dissipation. In 1815 he 

 married the daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, 

 evidently intending to give up his reckless life; 

 but the marriage proved unhappy, and in 

 about a year Lady Byron left him and refused 

 to return. This rupture gave rise to much 

 popular indignation against Byron, and reports 

 were circulated which caused him to leave 

 England, with an expressed resolution never 

 to return. He visited France, the field of 

 Waterloo, Brussels, the Rhine, Switzerland and 

 the north ,of Italy; for some time lived at 

 Rome and later at Geneva, where he completed 

 his third book of Childe Harold. Not long 

 after appeared The Prisoner of Chilian; The 

 Dream, and Other Poems; in 1817 Manfred, 

 a tragedy, and The Lament of Tasso, all of 

 which helped to make him as popular as a 

 poet as he was unpopular as a man. 



From Italy Byron made occasional excur- 

 sions to the islands of Greece, and at length 

 visited Athens, where he sketched many of 

 the scenes of the fourth and last book of 

 Childe Harold. Between 1817 and 1822 ap- 

 peared, among other poems, five books of 

 Don Juan and a number of dramas. While 

 living at Pisa he was for a time intimate with 

 Shelley, one of the few men whom he en- 

 tirely respected and with whom he was really 

 confidential. Shelley brought out all that was 

 best in his nature, and had the association not 

 been broken by Shelley's tragic death, Byron 

 might in time have found himself and worked 

 out a mode of life which should have been 

 worthy of his powers. Besides his contribu- 

 tions to the Liberal, a periodical which he 

 helped Leigh Hunt and Shelley to found at 

 this time, he completed Don Juan, with Wer- 

 ner, a tragedy, and The Deformed Trans- 

 formed, a fragment. These are the last of 

 Byron's poetical works. 



In 1823, troubled perhaps by the conscious- 

 ness that his life had too long been unworthy 

 of him and driven by an absolute passion for 

 liberty, he threw himself into the struggle for 

 the independence of Greece. In January, 1824, 

 he arrived at Missolonghi, where he was re- 

 ceived with the greatest enthusiasm. The air 

 of Missolonghi began to affect his health, and 

 on April 9, 1824, while riding in the rain, he 

 became ill ; a fever followed, which ten days 

 later ended fatally. 



