BYRON, GEORGE GORDON BYRON, 6TH BARON (1788-1824), English poet, was born in London at 16 Holles street, Cavendish square, on Jan. 22, 1788. The Byrons were of Norman stock, but the founder of the family was Sir John Byron, who entered into possession of the priory and lands of Newstead in the county of Nottingham in 1540. From him it descended (but with a bar-sinister) to a great-grandson, John (1st Baron) Byron (q.v.), a Cavalier general, who was raised to the peerage in 1643. The first Lord Byron died childless, and was succeeded by his brother Richard, the great-grandfather of William, the 5th lord, who outlived son and grandson, and was succeeded by his great-nephew, the poet. Admiral the Hon. John Byron (q.v.) was the poet's grandfather. His eldest son, Captain John Byron, the poet's father, was a libertine by choice and in an eminent degree. He caused to be divorced, and married (1779) as his first wife, the marchioness of Carmarthen (born Amelia D'Arcy), Baroness Con yers in her own right. One child of the marriage survived, the Hon. Augusta Byron (1783-1851), the poet's half-sister, who, in 1807, married her first cousin, Col. George Leigh. John Byron's second marriage to Catherine Gordon (b. 1765) of Gight in Aber deenshire took place at Bath on May 13, 1785. He is said to have squandered the fortunes of both wives. It is certain that Gight was sold to pay his debts and that the sole provision for his wife was a settlement of £3,000. It was an unhappy marriage. There was an attempt at living together in France, and, when this failed, Mrs. Byron returned to Scotland. On her way thither she gave birth to a son, christened George Gordon after his maternal grandfather, who was descended from Sir William Gordon of Gight, grandson of James I. of Scotland. After a while her hus band rejoined her, but went back to France and died at Valen ciennes on Aug. 2, 1791. His wife was not a bad woman, but she was not a good mother. Vain and capricious, passionate and self indulgent, she mismanaged her son from his infancy, now provok ing him by her foolish fondness, and now exciting his contempt by her paroxysms of impotent rage. In the conduct of her affairs she was praiseworthy. She hated and avoided debt, and when relief came (a civil list pension of 1300 a year) she spent most of it upon her son. The violence of her temper was abnormal. Her father committed suicide, and it is possible that she inherited a tendency to mental derangement.
The poet's first years were spent in lodgings at Aberdeen. His mother found him two tutors, first a clergyman named Ross, and then a good Latin scholar named Paterson, the son of the Byrons' shoemaker. From 1794 to 1798 he attended the grammar school, "threading all classes" till he reached the fourth. He was lame from his birth. His right leg and foot, possibly both feet, were contracted by infantile paralysis, and, to strengthen his muscles, his mother sent him in the summers of 1796-97 to a farm house on Deeside. To his Scottish upbringing he owed his love of mountains, his love and knowledge of the Bible, and too much Calvinism for faith or unfaith in Christianity. The death of his great-uncle (May 19, 1798) placed him in possession of the title and estates. Early in the autumn Mrs. Byron travelled south with her son and his nurse, and for a time made her home at Newstead Abbey. Byron was old enough to know what had befallen him. "It was a change from a shabby Scotch flat to a palace," a half ruined palace, indeed, but his very own. It was a proud moment, but in a few weeks he was once more in lodgings. The shrunken leg did not improve, and acting on bad advice his mother entrusted him to the care of a quack named Lavender, truss-maker to the general hospital at Nottingham. His nurse who was in charge of him maltreated him, and the quack tortured him to no purpose. At his own request he read Virgil and Cicero with a tutor.
In August 1799, he was sent to a preparatory school at Dulwich. The master, Dr. Glennie, gave the boy the free run of his library. He read a set of the British Poets from beginning to end more than once. This, too, was an initiation and a preparation. He remained at Dulwich till April 1801, when, on his mother's intervention, he was sent to Harrow, then under Dr. Drury. His school days, 1801—o5, were fruitful in two respects. He learned enough Latin and Greek to make him a classic, if not a classical scholar, and he made friends with his equals and superiors. He learned something of his own worth and of the worth of others. "My school-f riend ships," he says, "were with me passions." Two of his closest friends died young, and from Lord Clare, whom he loved best of all, he was separated by chance and circumstance. He was an odd mixture, now lying dreaming on his favourite tombstone in the churchyard, now the ring-leader in whatever mischief was afoot. He was a "record" swimmer, and, in spite of his lameness, enough of a cricketer to play for his school at Lord's, and yet he found time to read and master standard works of history and biography.
When he was a boy between eight and ten at Aberdeen he had "fallen in love" with his cousin, Mary Duff. Now, in the mid summer of 1803, when he was in his sixteenth year, he fell in love, seriously, with his distant relative, Mary Anne Chaworth, a "minor heiress" of the hall and park of Annesley, which marches with Newstead. Two years his senior, she was already engaged to a neighbouring squire. Mary Chaworth is the subject of at least five of his early poems, including the pathetic stanzas, "Hills of Annesley," and there are allusions to his love story in Childe Harold (c. z s.v.), and in "The Dream" 1816. The Easter holidays of 1804 were spent at Burgage Manor, Southwell, where Mrs. Byron had established herself, leaving Newstead Abbey to a ten ant, Lord Grey of Ruthyn.
Byron went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, in Oct. 1805. Cambridge did him no good. "The place is the devil," he said, and according to his own showing he did homage to the genius loci. There he made friends who were worthy of his choice. Among them were the scholar-dandy Scrope, Charles Skinner Matthews, Berdmore Davies, Francis Hodgson, who died provost of Eton, and, best friend of all, John Cam Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton). And there was another friend, a chorister named Edleston, a "humble youth" for whom he formed an attachment. He died whilst Byron was still abroad (May 1811), and the Thyrza poems of 1811-12 have been said, though on questionable evidence, to refer to his death. During the vacation of 1806, and in 1807 which was one "long vacation," he wrote most of his "Juvenile Poems," which were printed in a thin quarto of 66 pages by S. and J. Ridge of Newark. The "advertisement" is dated Dec. 23, 1806, but before that date he had begun to pre pare a second collection for the press. One poem ("To Mary") contained at least one stanza which was frankly indecent, and yielding to advice he gave orders that the entire issue be thrown into the fire. Early in January 1807 an expurgated collection entitled Poems on Various Occasions was ready for private dis tribution. Encouraged by Henry Mackenzie and Lord Wood houselee, he determined to recast this second issue and publish it under his own name. Hours of Idleness, "by George Gordon Lord Byron, a minor," was published in June 1807. The fourth and last issue of Juvenilia, entitled Poems, Original and Trans lated, was published in March 1808.
Hours of Idleness enjoyed a brief triumph. The Critical and other reviews were "very indulgent," but the Edinburgh Review for Jan. 1808 contained a scathing article, not, as Byron believed, by Jeffrey, but by Brougham. The sole result was that it supplied fresh material and a new title for some rhyming couplets on "British Bards" which he had begun to write. A satire on Jeffrey, the editor, and Lord Holland, the patron of the Edinburgh Review, was slipped into the middle of "British Bards," and the poem, rechristened English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was published March 1, 1809.
In April 1808, whilst he was still "a minor," Byron entered upon his inheritance, and established himself at Newstead in September on leaving Cambridge. The possession of this lordly and historic domain was an inspiration in itself. It was an ideal home for one who was to be hailed as the spirit or genius of romance.
On March 13, 1809, he took his seat in the House of Lords. He had determined, as soon as he was of age, to travel in the East, but first he invited Hobhouse and three others to a house-warming. Perhaps the story of the revels of the party, as told in Childe Harold (canto 1, stanzas 5-9), need not be taken too seriously. Byron was angry because Lord De La Warr did not wish him good-bye, and visited his displeasure on friends and "lemans" alike. May and June were devoted to the preparation of an en larged edition of his satire. At length, accompanied by Hobhouse and a small staff of retainers, he set out on his travels. He sailed from Falmouth on July 2, and reached Lisbon on July 7, 1809. The first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage contain a record of the principal events of his first year of absence.
Childe Harold and the Eastern tales which followed laid English contemporary readers under a great debt to Byron. They were a liberal education in the manners and customs of "the gorgeous East," in the scenery, the art, the history and politics of Italy and Greece. He widened the horizon of his contemporaries, bring ing within their ken wonders and beauties hitherto unknown or unfamiliar, and in so doing he heightened and cultivated, he "touched with emotion," the unlettered and unimaginative many, that "reading public" which despised or eluded the refinements and subtleties of less popular writers.
Byron sailed from Gibraltar on Aug. 16, and spent a month at Malta making love to Mrs. Spencer Smith (the "Fair Florence" of c. i 1. s. xxix.–xxxiii.). He anchored off Prevesa on Sept. 28. The second canto records a journey on horseback through Albania, then almost a terra incognita, as far as Tepeleni, where he was entertained by Ali Pacha (Oct. 2o), a yachting tour along the shores of the Ambracian gulf (Nov. 8-23), a journey by land from Larnaki to Athens (Dec. 15-25), and excursions in Attica, Sunium and Marathon (Jan. 13-25, 181o) . Of the tour in Asia Minor, a visit to Ephesus (March 15, 18ro), an excursion in the Troad (April 13) , and the famous swim across the Hellespont (May 3) , the record is to be sought elsewhere. The stanzas on Constanti nople (lxxvii.–lxxxii.), where Byron and Hobhouse stayed for two months, though written at the time and on the spot, were not included in the poem till 1814. They are, probably, part of a projected third canto. On July 14 Hobhouse set sail for England and Byron returned to Athens.
Of Byron's second year of residence in the East little is known beyond the bare facts that he was travelling in the Morea during August and September, that early in October he was at Patras, having just recovered from a severe attack of malarial fever, and that by Nov. 14 he had returned to Athens and taken up his quarters at the Franciscan convent. Of his movements during the next five months there is no record, but of his studies and pursuits there is substantial evidence. He learnt Romaic, he compiled the notes to the second canto of Childe Harold. He wrote (March 12) Hints from Horace (published 1831), an imitation or loose trans lation of the Epistola ad Pisones (Art of Poetry) , and (March i7) The Curse of Minerva (published 1815), a skit on Lord Elgin's deportation of the metopes and frieze of the Parthenon. He left Athens in April, passed some weeks at Malta, and landed at Ports mouth (c. July 20). Arrived in London he consulted his literary adviser and cousin, R. C. Dallas, with regard to the publication of Hints from Horace. Of Childe Harold he said nothing, but after some hesitation produced the ms. from a "small trunk," and, presenting him with the copyright, commissioned Dallas to offer it to a publisher. It was finally accepted by Murray of Fleet street, who undertook to share the profits of an edition with Dallas.
Meanwhile Mrs. Byron died suddenly from a stroke of apoplexy. Byron set off at once for Newstead, but did not find his mother alive. He had had but little affection for her while she lived, but her death touched him to the quick. "I had but one friend," he exclaimed, "and she is gone." Another loss awaited him. Whilst his mother lay dead in his house, he heard that his friend Matthews had been drowned in the Cam. Edleston and Wingfield had died in May, but the news had reached him on landing. There were troubles on every side. On Oct. 11 he wrote the "Epistle to a Friend" ("Oh, banish care," etc.) and the lines "To Thyrza," which, with other elegies, were appended to the second edition of Childe Harold (April 17, 1812). This cry of desolation, this open profession of melancholy, first excited the interest of contempo raries.
Towards the close of the year he made friends with Moore. Some lines in English Bards (ii. 466-467), taunting Moore on fighting a duel with Jeffrey with "leadless pistol," had led to a challenge, and it was not till Byron returned to England that explanations ensued, and that the challenge was withdrawn. The friendship which sprang up between them still serves Byron in good stead. Moore's Life of Byron (1830) is no doubt a picture of the man at his best, but it is a genuine likeness. At the end of October Byron moved to London and settled at 8 St. James's street. On Feb. 27, 1812, he made his first speech in the House of Lords on a bill which made the wilful destruction of certain newly invented stocking-frames a capital offence, speaking in defence of the riotous "hands" who feared that their numbers would be dimin ished by improved machinery. It was a brilliant speech and won the praise of Burdett and Lord Holland. He made two other speeches during the same session. Childe Harold (4to) was pub lished on Tuesday, March 1 o, 1812. "The effect," says Moore, "was . . . electric, his fame . . . seemed to spring, like the palace of a fairy king, in a night." A fifth edition (8vo) was issued on Dec. 5, 1812. Just turned 24, he "found himself famous," a great poet, a rising statesman. Society was now at his feet. But the excitement and absorption of one reigning passion after another destroyed his peace of mind. His first affair of any moment was with Lady Caroline Lamb the wife of William Lamb (Lord Melbourne). The culmination of this tragic episode—tragic for the enamoured woman--was an unbelievable scene at Lady Heathcote's ball in June 1813, which was the talk of all London.
To Lady Caroline succeeded Lady Oxford, who was double his own age, and Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster, the "Ginevra" of his sonnets, the "Medora" of The Corsair.
There was no slackening of his poetical energies. In Feb. 1813 he published The Waltz (anonymously), he wrote and published The Giaour (published June 5, 1813) and The Bride of Abydos (published Nov. 29, 1813), and he wrote The Corsair (published Feb. 1, 1814). The Turkish Tales were even more popular than Childe Harold. Murray sold Io,000 copies of The Corsair on the day of publication.
In the summer of 1813 a new and potent influence came into his life. Mrs. Leigh, whose home was at Newmarket, came up to London on a visit. After a long interval the brother and sister met, and whether there is or is not any foundation for the dark story obscurely hinted at in Byron's lifetime, and afterwards made public property by Mrs. Beecher Stowe (Macmillan's Magazine, 1869, pp. 377-396), there is no question as to the depth and sin cerity of his love for his. "one relative." Byron passed the seasons of 1813-14 in London. Socially he was on the crest of the wave. He was a welcome guest at the great Whig houses, at Lady Mel bourne's, at Lady Jersey's, at Holland House. Sheridan and Moore, Rogers and Campbell were his intimates and companions. He was a member of the Alfred, of Watier's, of the Cocoa Tree, and half a dozen clubs besides. After the publication of The Corsair he had promised an interval of silence, but the abdication of Napoleon evoked an Ode in his dishonour (April 16). Lara, a Tale, an informal sequel to The Corsair, was published anonymously on Aug. 6, 1814.
Newstead had been put up for sale, but pending the completion of the contract was still in his possession. During his last visit but one, whilst his sister was his guest, he became engaged to Miss Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke (b. May 17, 1792; d. May 16, 186o), the only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, Bart., and the Hon. Judith (born Noel), daughter of Lord Wentworth. She was an heiress, and in succession to a peerage in her own right (becoming Baroness Wentworth in 1856). She was a pretty girl of "a perfect figure," highly educated, a mathematician, and, by courtesy, a poetess. She had rejected Byron's first offer, but, believing that her cruelty had broken his heart and that he was an altered man, she was now determined on marriage. On her side there was ambition touched with fancy—on his, a wish to be mar ried and some hope perhaps of finding an escape from himself. The marriage took place at Seaham in Durham on Jan. 2, 1815. Bride and bridegroom spent three months in paying visits, and at the end of March settled at 13 Piccadilly terrace, London.
Byron was a member of the committee of management of Drury Lane theatre, and devoted much of his time to his pro fessional duties. He wrote but little poetry. Hebrew Melodies (published April 1815), begun at Seaham in October 1814, were finished and given to the musical composer, Isaac Nathan, for publication. The Siege of Corinth and Parisina (published Feb. 7, 1816) were got ready for the press. On Dec. Io, Lady Byron gave birth to a daughter christened Augusta Ada. The tale of their strange honeymoon shows that there were difficulties from the beginning. It is certain that before and after the child was born his conduct was so harsh, so violent and so eccentric, that his wife believed, or tried to persuade herself, that he was mad. Money difficulties were acute ; and both Annabella and Augusta suffered from Byron's conduct.
On Jan. 15, 1816, Byron ordered his wife to leave the Piccadilly house, the bailiffs were in it, and he wished to break up the establishment. Lady Byron went home, claimed her father's protection, and demanded a separation from her husband. In 1869 Mrs. Beecher Stowe affirmed that Lady Byron had expressly told her that Byron was guilty of incest with his half-sister, Mrs. Leigh; and in 1905 the second Lord Lovelace (Lord Byron's grandson) printed Astarte, which is now held by most judges to prove the truth of this charge. At the time, neither Lady Byron nor her advisers supported their demand by this or any other charge of misconduct. Lady Byron continued to correspond with Augusta, whom she certainly desired to shield, and Byron used Augusta as a means of communication with his wife. The tangled story is too complicated to be related here, and the reader must be referred to the authorities cited at the end of this article. To the end Byron hoped for a reconciliation, and he never ceased to lament the separation from his daughter.
The separation of the Byrons was the talk of the town. There was a balance of opinion, but politics turned the scale. Byron had recently published some pro-Gallican stanzas, "On the `Star of the Legion of Honour,' " in the Examiner (April 7). The Whigs defended Byron as best they could, but his own world, with one or two exceptions, ostracized him. The "excommunicating voice of society," as Moore put it, was loud and insistent. The articles of separation were signed on or about April 18, and on Sunday, April 25, Byron sailed from Dover for Ostend. The "Lines on Churchill's Grave" were written whilst he was waiting for a favourable wind. Byron's ostracism in London was in a sense his liberation. It made him great. "The howl of contumely," wrote Macaulay, "followed him across the sea, over the Alps ; it gradually waxed fainter ; it died away. . . . His poetry became more popular than it had ever been ; and his complaints were read with tears by thousands and tens of thousands who had never seen his face." He was from that moment the typical figure of the romantic movement, the artist who found his subject in his own sorrows, in his own re morse. His cry, "My pang shall find a voice," was the cry of Rene and of Werther. He displayed to the world, as Arnold has said, "the pageant of a bleeding heart." Byron's route lay through the Low Countries, and by the Rhine to Switzerland. On his way he halted at Brussels and visited the field of Waterloo. He reached Geneva on May 25, where he met by appointment at Dejean's Hotel d'Angleterre, Shelley, Mary Godwin and Jane (or "Claire") Clairmont. The meeting was probably at the instance of Claire, who had recently become Byron's mistress. On June Io Byron moved to the Villa Diodati on the southern shore of the lake. Shelley and his party had already settled at an adjoining villa, the Campagne Montalegre. The friends were constantly together. On June 23 Byron and Shelley started for a yachting tour round the lake. They visited the castle of Chillon on June 26, and, being detained by weather at the Hotel de l'Ancre, Ouchy, Byron finished (June 27-29) the third canto of Childe Harold (published Nov. 18), and began the Prisoner of Chillon (published Dec. 5, 1816). These and other poems of July–September 1816, e.g. "The Dream" and the first two acts of Manfred (published June 16, 1817) , betray the in fluence of Shelley. Byron passed the summer at the Villa Diodati, where he also wrote the Monody on the Death of Sheridan, pub lished Sept. 9, 1816. The second half of September was spent and devoted to "an excursion in the mountains." His journal (Sept. 18-29), which was written for and sent to Mrs. Leigh, is a great prose poem, the source of the word pictures of Alpine scenery in Manfred. His old friend Hobhouse was with him and he enjoyed himself, but at the close he confesses that he could not lose his "own wretched identity" in the "majesty and the power and the glory" of nature. Remorse was scotched, not killed. On Oct. 6 Byron and Hobhouse started via Milan and Verona for Venice, which was reached early in November. For the next three years Byron lived in or near Venice—at first, 1816-17, in apartments in the Frezzeria, and after Jan. 1818 in the central block of the Mocenigo palace. At Venice he pursued a life of deliberate profligacy. Of two of his amours we learn enough or too much from his letters to Murray and to Moore—the first with his land lord's wife, Marianna Segati, the second with Margarita Cogni (the "Fornarina"), a Venetian of the lower class, who amused him with her savagery and her wit. Nevertheless he worked hard, and about the middle of April 1817 set out for Rome, where, with Hobhouse as companion and guide, he stayed three weeks. He returned to Venice on May 28, but shortly removed to a villa at Mira on the Brenta, some 7m. inland. A month later (June 26) when memory had selected and reduced to order the first impressions of his tour, he began to work them up into a fourth canto of Childe Harold. Among the books which Murray sent out to Venice was a copy of Hookham Frere's W histlecra f t. Byron took the hint and produced Beppo, a Venetian Story (published anonymously on Feb. 28, 1818). He attributes his choice of the mock heroic ottava-rima to Frere's example, but he was certainly familiar with Casti's Novelle, and, according to Stendhal, with the poetry of Buratti. The success of Beppo and a growing sense that "the excellent manner of W histlecra f t" was the manner for him, led him to study Frere's masters and models, Berni and Pulci. An accident had led to a great discovery.
The fourth canto of Childe Harold was published on April 28, 1818. In September he began Don Juan. His own account of the inception of his last and greatest work is characteristic but mis leading. He says (Sept. 9) that his new poem is to be in the style of Beppo, and is "meant to be a little quietly facetious about everything." A year later (Aug. 12, 1819), he says that he neither has nor had a plan—but that "he had or has materials." By mate rials he means books, such as Dalzell's Shipwrecks and Disasters by Sea, or de Castelnau's Histoire de la nouvelle Russie, etc., which might be regarded as poetry in the rough. The "building up of the drama," as Shelley puts it, was a slow and gradual process. Cantos I., II. were published (4to) on July 15, 1819; Cantos iv., v., finished in Nov. 182o, were not published till Aug. 8, 1821. Cantos vi.–xvi., written between June 1822 and March 1823, were published at intervals between July 15, 1823 and March 26, 1824. Canto xvii. was begun in May 1823, but was never finished. A fragment of 14 stanzas, found in his room at Missolonghi, was first published in 1903.
He did not put all his materials into Don Juan. Mazeppa, a tale of the Russian Ukraine, based on a passage in Voltaire's Charles XII., was finished by Sept. 30, 1818 and published with an Ode on Venice on June 28, 1819. In the spring of 1819 Byron met in Venice, and formed a connection with, an Italian lady of rank, Teresa (born Gamba), wife of the Cavaliere Guic cioli. She was young and beautiful, well-read and accomplished. Married at 16 to a man nearly four times her age, she fell in love with Byron at first sight, soon became and for nearly four years remained his mistress. A good and true wife to him in all but name, she won from Byron ample devotion and a prolonged con stancy, though he found the position of accredited cavaliere servente irksome. Her volume of Recollections (Lord Byron juge par les temoins de sa vie, 1869), taken for what it is worth, is testimony in Byron's favour. The countess left Venice for Ravenna at the end of April; within a month she sent for Byron, and on June io he arrived at Ravenna and took rooms in the Strada di Porto Sisi. The house (now No. 295) is close to Dante's tomb, and to gratify the countess and pass the time he wrote the Prophecy of Dante (published April 21, 1821) . According to the preface the poem was a metrical experiment, an exercise in terza rims; but it had a deeper significance. It was "intended for the Italians." Its purport was revolutionary. In the fourth canto of Childe Harold, already translated into Italian, he had attacked the powers, and "Albion most of all" for her betrayal of Venice, and he appeals to the country of his adoption to strike a blow for freedom—to "unite." It is difficult to realize the force or extent of Byron's influence on continental opinion. His own countrymen admired his poetry, but abhorred and laughed at his politics. Abroad he was the prophet and champion of liberty. His hatred of tyranny, his defence of the oppressed, made him a power in Europe. It brought consolation and encouragement, and it was not spoken in vain. It must, however, be borne in mind that Byron was more of a king-hater than a people-lover. He was against the oppressors, but he disliked and despised the oppressed. He was aristocrat by conviction as well as birth, and if he espoused a popular cause it was de haut en bas. His connection with the Gambas brought him into touch with the revolutionary movement, and thenceforth he was under the espionage of the Austrian em bassy at Rome. He was suspected and "shadowed," but he was left alone.
Early in September Byron returned to La Mira, bringing the countess with him. A month later he was surprised by a visit from Moore, who was on his way to Rome. Byron installed Moore in the Mocenigo palace and visited him daily. Before the final part ing (Oct. 11) Byron placed in Moore's hands the ms. of his Life and Adventures brought down to the close of 1816. Moore, as Byron suggested, pledged the ms. to Murray for 2,000 guineas, to be Moore's property if redeemed in Byron's lifetime, but if not, to be forfeit to Murray at Byron's death. On May 17, 1824, with Murray's assent and goodwill, the ms. was burned in the drawing room of 5o Albemarle street. Neither Murray nor Moore lost their money. The Longmans lent Moore a sufficient sum to repay Murray, and were themselves repaid out of the receipts of Moore's Life of Byron. Byron told Moore that the memoranda were not "confessions," that they were "the truth but not the whole truth." They did not explain the cause or causes of the separation from his wife. An anonymous work entitled The Life, Writings, etc., of • • • Lord Byron (3 vols., 1825) purports to give "Recollections of the Lately Destroyed Manuscript." To judge by internal evi dence (see "The Wedding Day," etc., ii. 278-284) there is some measure of truth in this assertion, but the work as a whole is untrustworthy.
At the close of 1819 Byron finally left Venice and settled at Ravenna in his own apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli. At Ravenna his literary activity was greater than ever. His transla tion of the first canto of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore (published in The Liberal, No. IV., July 30, 1822), a laborious and scholarly achievement, was the work of the first two months of the year. From April to July he was at work on the composition of Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice, a tragedy in five acts (published April 21, 1821). Moved by the example of Alfieri he strove to reform the British drama by "a severer approach to the rules." He would read his countrymen a "moral lesson" on the dramatic propriety of observing the three unities. Eighteen additional sheets of the Memoirs and a fifth canto of Don Juan were written in the autumn, and in Jan. 1821 Byron began to work on his second "historical drama," Sardanapalus. But politics intervened, and little progress was made. He had been elected capo of the "Americani," a branch of the Carbonari, and his time was taken up with buying and storing arms and ammunition, and consulta tions with leading conspirators. Meanwhile a controversy had arisen between Bowles and Campbell with regard to the merits of Pope. Byron rushed into the fray. To avenge and exalt Pope, to decry the "Lakers," and to lay down his own canons of art, Byron addressed two letters to * * * * * * * * * (i.e., John Murray), entitled "Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope." The first was published in 1821, the second in 1835. Byron, the protagonist of the romantic movement, was, paradoxically, the persistent admirer of Pope and the classical English school, and the violent assailant of the Lake poets.
The revolution in Italy came to nothing, and by May 28, Byron had finished his work on Sardanapalus. The Two Foscari, a third historical drama, was begun on June 12 and finished on July 9. On the same day he began Cain, a Mystery. Cain startled and shocked the orthodox. It was not irreverent or blasphemous, but it treated accepted dogmas as open questions. Cain was published in the same volume with the Two Foscari and Sardanapalus, Dec. 19, 1821. The Blues, a skit upon literary coteries and their patronesses, was written in August. It was first published in The Liberal, No. III., April 26, 1823. When Cain was finished Byron turned from grave to gay, from serious to humorous theology. Southey had thought fit to eulogize George III. in hexameter verse. He called his funeral ode a "Vision of Judgment." In the preface there was an obvious reference to Byron. The "Satanic School" of poetry was attributed to "men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations." Byron's revenge was complete. In his "Vision of Judgment" (published in The Liberal, No. I., Oct. 15, 1822) the tables are turned. The laureate is brought before the hosts of heaven and rejected by devils and angels alike. In October Byron wrote Heaven and Earth, a Mystery (The Liberal, No. II., Jan. I, 1823), a lyrical drama based on the legend of the "Watchers," or fallen angels of the Book of Enoch.
The countess and her family had been expelled from Ravenna in July 1821, but Byron still lingered on in his apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli. At length (Oct. 28) he set out for Pisa. On the road he met his old friend, Lord Clare, and spent a few minutes in his company. Rogers, whom he met at Bologna, was his fellow traveller as far as Florence. At Pisa he rejoined the countess, who had taken on his behalf the Villa Lanfranchi on the Arno. At Ravenna Byron had lived amongst Italians. At Pisa he was sur rounded by a knot of his own countrymen, friends and acquaint ances of the Shelleys. Among them were E. J. Trelawny, Thomas Medwin, author of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824), and Edward Elliker Williams. His first work at Pisa was to dramatize Miss Lee's Kruitzner, or the German's Tale. He had written a first act in 1815, but as the ms. was mislaid he made a fresh adaptation of the story which he rechristened Werner, or the Inheritance (1822). Alone of Byron's plays Werner took hold of the stage. Macready's "Werner" was one of his most famous impersonations.
In the early spring Allegra, his daughter by Claire Clairmont, died at the convent of Bagna Cavallo on April 20, 1822. He had insisted on having the guardianship of the child, and had himself placed her in the convent. Soon after the death of Allegra, Byron wrote the last of his eight plays, The Deformed Trans formed (published by John Hunt, Feb. 20, 1824). With the idea of having a paper of his own in which he could answer his critics and put forward his own theories he invited Leigh Hunt to Pisa, and undertook to lodge him with his wife and six children in the Villa Lanfranchi. The outcome of this arrangement was The Liberal—Verse and Prose from the South. Four numbers were issued between Oct. 1822 and June 1823. The Liberal did not suc ceed financially, and the joint menage was a lamentable failure.
Correspondence of Byron and some of his Contemporaries (1828) was Hunt's revenge for the slights—sometimes fancied slights— which he suffered in Byron's service. Yet Byron made generous allowances to the Hunts, and made over to John Hunt copyrights of enormous value. Yachting was one of the chief amusements of the English colony at Pisa. A schooner, the "Bolivar," was built for Byron, and a smaller boat, the "Don Juan" re-named "Ariel," for Shelley. Hunt arrived at Pisa on July 1. On July 8 Shelley, who had remained in Pisa on Hunt's account, started for a sail with his friend Williams and a lad named Vivian. The "Ariel" was wrecked in the Gulf of Spezia, and Shelley and his companions were drowned. On Aug. 16 Byron and Hunt witnessed the "burn ing of Shelley" on the seashore near Via Reggio. Byron told Moore that "all of Shelley was consumed but the heart." Whilst the fire was burning Byron swam out to the "Bolivar" and back to the shore. The violent emotion caused by the death of Shelley and the improvident swim brought on one of the many fevers which weakened his constitution and shortened his life.
The Austrian Government would not allow the Gambas or the countess Guiccioli to remain in Pisa. As a half measure Byron took a villa for them at Montenero near Leghorn, but as the authorities were still dissatisfied they removed to Genoa. At Genoa Byron took up his quarters with the Gambas at the Casa Saluzzo, and Hunt and his party at the Casa Negroto with Mrs. Shelley. Life at Genoa was uneventful. Of Hunt and Mrs. Shelley he saw as little as possible. Though his still unpublished poems were at the service of The Liberal, each number was badly re ceived. Byron had broken with Murray and was offering Don Juan (cantos vi.–xii.) to John Hunt, the publisher of The Liberal, but he meditated a "run down to Naples" and a recommencement of Childe Harold. Home politics and the congress of Verona (Nov.– Dec. 1822) suggested a satire entitled The Age of Bronze (pub lished April I, 1823). By the middle of February (1823) he had completed The Island; or Christian and his Comrades (published June 26, 1823), based on Bligh's Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty, and Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands. When The Island was finished, Byron went on with Don Juan, his last, and his greatest, work. In Don Juan he set himself to depict life as a whole. The style is often misnamed the mock-heroic. It might be more accurately described as humorous-realistic. His "plan was to have no plan" in the sense of synopsis or argument, but in the person of his hero to "unpack his heart," to avenge himself on his enemies, personal or political, to suggest an apology for himself and to disclose a criticism and philosophy of life. As a satirist in the widest sense of the word, as an analyser of human nature, he ranks among the greatest. It is a test of the quality of Don Juan that its reputation has slowly increased and that, in spite of occa sional grossness and voluptuousness, it has come to be recognized as Byron's masterpiece. Don Juan will be read for its own sake, for its beauty, its humour, its faithfulness. It is a "hymn to the earth," but it is a human sequence to "its own music chaunted." Early in March the news reached him that he had been elected a member of the Greek Committee, a small body of influential Liberals who had taken up the cause of the liberation of Greece. Byron at once offered money and advice, and after some hesita tion on the score of health, determined "to go to Greece." His first step was to sell the "Bolivar" to Lord Blessington, and purchase the "Hercules," a collier-built tub of 120 tons. On July 23 the "Hercules" sailed from Leghorn, and anchored off Cepha lonia on Aug. 3. The party on board consisted of Byron, Pietro Gamba, Trelawny, Hamilton Browne, and six or seven servants. The next four months were spent at Cephalonia, at first on board the "Hercules," in the harbour of Argostoli, and afterwards at Metaxata. Byron took time to ascertain the real state of affairs in Greece. The revolutionary Greeks were split up into parties, not to say factions, and there were several leaders. At length he received a message from Prince Alexander Mavrocordato, urging him to come at once to Missolonghi, and enclosing a request from the legislative body "to co-operate with Mavrocordato in the or ganization of western Greece." Byron sailed from Argostoli on Dec. 29, 1823, and after an adventurous voyage landed at Misso longhi on Jan. 5, 18 24. He met with a royal reception. Byron may have sought, but he did not find, "a soldier's grave." During his three months' residence at Missolonghi he advanced large sums of money for the payment of troops, for repair and construction of fortifications, for the provision of medical appliances. He brought opposing parties into line, and served as a link between Odysseus, the democratic leader of the insurgents, and Mavrocordato. He was eager to take the field, but a revolt in the Morea, and the repeated disaffection of his Suliote guard prevented him from undertaking the capture of Epacto, an exploit which he had re served for his own leadership. On March 18 he received an invi tation from Odysseus and other chiefs to attend a conference at Salona, and by the same messenger an offer from the government to appoint him "governor-general of the enfranchised parts of Greece." He promised to attend the conference but did not pledge himself to the immediate acceptance of office. But "roads and rivers were impassable," and the conference was inevitably post poned.
His health had given way, but he does not seem to have realized that his life was in danger. On Feb. 15 he was struck down by a fit, which left him speechless though not motionless. He recovered sufficiently to conduct his business as usual, and to drill the troops. But he suffered from dizziness in the head and spasms in the chest, and a few days later he was seized with a second though slighter convulsion. These attacks may have hastened but they did not cause his death. On April 9 a letter from his sister raised his spirits and tempted him to ride out with Gamba. It came on to rain, and though he was drenched to the skin he insisted on dis mounting and returning in an open boat to the quay in front of his house. Two hours later he was seized with ague and violent rheumatic pains. On the 11th he rode out once more through the olive groves, attended by his escort of Suliote guards, but for the last time. Whether he had got his deathblow, or whether copious blood-letting by his incompetent attendant Bruno, made recovery impossible, he gradually grew worse, and on the ninth day of his illness fell into a comatose sleep. It was reported that in his delirium he had called out, half in English, half in Italian, "For ward—forward—courage ! follow my example—don't be afraid!" and that he tried to send a last message to his sister and to his wife. He died at six o'clock in the evening of Easter Monday, April 19, 1824, aged 36 years and three months. Mavrocordato gave orders that 37 minute-guns should be fired at daylight and decreed a general mourning of 21 days. His body was embalmed and lay in state. On May 25 his remains, all but the heart, which is buried at Missolonghi, were sent back to England, and were finally laid beneath the chancel of the village church of Hucknall-Torkard on July 16, 1824. The authorities would not sanction burial in Westminster Abbey, and there is neither bust nor statue of Lord Byron in Poets' Corner.
The title passed to his first cousin as 7th baron, from whom the subsequent barons were descended. The poet's daughter Ada (d. 1852) predeceased her mother, but the barony of Wentworth went to her heirs. She was the first wife of Baron King, who in 1838 was created 1st earl of Lovelace, and had two sons (of whom the younger, b. 1839, d. 1906, was 2nd earl of Lovelace) and a daughter, Lady Anne, who married Wilfrid S. Blunt (q.v.). On the death of the 2nd earl the barony of Wentworth went to his daughter and only child, and the earldom of Lovelace to his half brother by the 1st earl's second wife.
Throughout his stormy life Byron was faithful to his vocation as a poet. Poetry was often but not always an exaltation and a re lief. He could fulfil his tasks in "hours of gloom." If he had not been a great poet, he would have gained credit as a painstaking and laborious man of letters. His habitual temperance was the out come of a stern resolve. He had no scruples, but he kept his body in subjection as a means to an end. In his youth Byron was a cautious spendthrift. Even when he was "cursedly dipped" he knew what he was about; and afterwards, when his income was sufficient for his requirements, he kept a hold on his purse. He loved display, and as he admitted, spent money on women, but he checked his accounts and made both ends meet. On the other hand, the "gift of continency" he did not possess, nor trouble him self to acquire. He was, to use his own phrase, "passionate of body," and his desires were stronger than his will. Byron was kindly and generous by nature. He took pleasure in helping neces sitous authors, men and women, not at all en grand seigneur, or without counting the cost, but because he knew what poverty meant, and a fellow-feeling made him kind. Even in Venice he set aside a fixed sum for charitable purposes. It is to his credit that neither libertinism nor disgrace nor remorse withered at its root this herb of grace. Cynical speeches with regard to friends and friendship, often quoted to his disadvantage, need not be taken too literally. Byron talked in accordance with the whim of the mo ment. His acts do not correspond with his words. He rejected both Protestant and Catholic orthodoxy, but like the Athenians he was "exceedingly religious." He could not, he did not wish to, detach himself from a belief in an Invisible Power. "A fearful looking form of judgment" haunted him to the last. Whatever his faults may have been, Byron had certain noble qualities which did not fail him at his worst. He was courageous, he was often kind, and he loved truth rather than lies. He was a worker and a fighter. He hated tyranny, and was prepared to sacrifice money and ease and life in the cause of popular freedom.
In his own lifetime Byron stood higher on the continent of Europe than in England or even in America. His works as they came out were translated into French, German, Italian and Rus sian, and the stream of translation has never ceased to flow. The Bride of Abydos has been translated into ten, Cain into nine lan guages. Of Manfred there is one Bohemian translation, two Dan ish, two Dutch, two French, nine German, three Hungarian, three Italian, two Polish, one Romaic, one Rumanian, four Russian and three Spanish translations. The dictum or verdict of Goethe that "the English may think of Byron as they please, but this is certain that they show no poet who is to be compared with him" was and is the keynote of continental European criticism. A survey of European literature is a testimony to the universality of his in fluence. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Delavigne, Alfred de Musset, in France; Borne, Muller and Heine in Germany ; the Italian poets Leopardi and Giusti ; Pushkin and Lermontov among the Rus sians; Mickiewicz and Slowacki among the Poles—more or less as eulogists or imitators or disciples—were of the following of Byron. The part he played in revolutionary politics endeared him to those who were struggling to be free. He had the passion and the energy, the brilliance—in a word the genius—which made his voice heard throughout Europe. He was the least insular, the most European, of British poets. It was as the creator of new types, "forms more real than living man," that Byron appealed to the artistic sense and to the imagination of Latin, Teuton or Slay. That "he taught us little" of the things of the spirit, that he knew no cure for the sickness of the soul, were considerations which lay outside the province of literary criticism. "It is a mark," says Goethe (Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung and Wahrheit, 1876, 125), "of true poetry, that as a secular gospel it knows how to free us from the earthly burdens which press upon us, by inward seren ity, by outward charm." Now of this "secular gospel" the redemp tion from "real woes" by the exhibition of imaginary glory and imaginary delights, Byron was both prophet and evangelist.
Byron was 5f t. Bin. in height, and strongly built ; only with difficulty and varying success did he prevent himself from grow ing fat. At 35 he was extremely thin. He was "very slightly lame," but he was painfully conscious of his deformity and walked as little and as seldom as he could. He had a small head covered and fringed with dark brown or auburn curls. His forehead was high and narrow, of a marble whiteness. His eyes were of a light grey colour, clear and luminous. His nose was straight and well-shaped, but "from being a little too thick, it looked better in profile than in front face." Moore says that it was in "the mouth and chin that the great beauty as well as expression of his fine countenance lay." The upper lip was of a Grecian shortness and the corners descending. His complexion was pale and colourless. Scott speaks of "his beautiful pale face—like a spirit's, good or evil." Charles Matthews said that "he was the only man to whom he could apply the word beautiful." Coleridge said that "if you had seen him you could scarce disbelieve him . . . his eyes the open portals of the sun—things of light and for light." He was likened to "the god of the Vatican," the Apollo Belvedere.
The best-known portraits are : (I) Byron at the age of seven by Kay of Edinburgh; (2) a drawing of Lord Byron at Cambridge by Gilchrist (18o8) ; (3) a portrait in oils by George Sanders (1809) ; (4) a miniature by Sanders (1812) ; (5) a portrait in oils by Richard Westall, R.A. (1813) ; (6), a portrait in oils (Byron in Albanian dress) by Thomas Phillips, R.A. (1813) ; (7) a portrait in oils by Phillips (1813) ; (8-9) a sketch for a miniature, and a miniature by James Holmes (1 815) ; (1 o) a sketch by George Henry Harlow (1818) ; (I 1) a portrait in oils by Vincenzio Camuccini (in the Vatican) c. 1822; (12) a portrait in oils by W. H. West (182 2) ; (r3) a sketch by Count D'Orsay (1823) . Busts were taken by Bertel Thorwaldsen (1817) and by Lorenzo Bartolini (1822). The statue (18 29) in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, is by Thorwaldsen after the bust sculptured in 1817.