BYRON, GEORGE GORDON, Lord, a great English poet, was b. in Holies street, Lon don, on the 22d of Jan., 1783. He was the only son of capt. John Byron, of the guards, and Catherine Gordon of Gight, an heiress in Aberdeenshire. Capt. Byron and his did not live happily. Domestic peace perished in the conflict of their ungoverna ble tempers. The husband's habits were profligate in the highest decree, and the wife's fortune was soon squandered in the debauch and at the gambling-table. Separated from her husband, the lady retired to the city of Aberdeen with her little lame boy, whom she passionately loved, her sole income at this time being about £130 per annum. In his 11th year, succeeded his grand-uncle, William lord Byron; and mother and son immediately left the north for Newstead abbey, the ancient seat of the family, situated a few miles distant from Nottingham, in the romantic district which Sherwood forest shadowed, and which was once familiar with the bugle of Robin Hood. On succeeding to the title, B. was placed in a private school at Dulwich, and thereafter sent to Har row. The most remarkable thing about B.'s early years was his extraordinary attach ments. Like almost every member of the poetic tribe, he " had a passion for the name of Mary." In his 8th year, in Aberdeenshire, he fell in love with Mary Duff. Margaret Parker, a cousin of his own, and who died early, was his next idol. His strongest pas sion was, however, for Mary Chaworth. This lady he first met when on a visit to New stead in 1803, at which date he was in his 15th.year. Miss Chaworth's father had been killed in a duel by lord Byron, the grand-uncle of the poet, and marriage would have healed the family feud, and would have joined rich estates. But it was not to be. Miss Chaworth was 13.'s senior by two years, and evidently felt little flattered by the worship of the lame Harrow boy. Next year came the parting interview described in The Dream, with which every Englishman is familiar now as with a personal experience. In 1805, B. removed to Trinity college, Cambridge; and two years thereafter, his first volumn of verse, entitled Hours of Idleness, was printed at Newark. The poems therein contained were not absolutely without merit, but they might have been written by any well-educated lad who, in addition to ordinary ability, possessed the slightest touch of poetic sensibility. The volume was fiercely assailed by lord (then Mr.) Brougham in the EdinburghReview, and his sarcasms stung B. into a poet. The satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, was written in reply to the article in the Edinburgh, and the town was taken by a play of wit and a mastery of versification unequaled since the days of Pope. In the babble of praise that immediately arose, B. withdrew from England, visited the shores of the Mediterranean, and sojourned in Turkey and Greece. On his return in 1812, he published the first, two cantos of Childe Harold, with immense success, and was at once enrolled among the great poets of his country. During the next two years, he produced The Giaour; The Bride off' Abydos; The Corsair; and Lara. While these brilliant pieces were flowing from his pen, he was indulging in all the revelries and excesses of the metropolis. What was noblest in the man revolted at this mode of life, and, in an effort to escape from it, he married Miss Milbanke, daughter of sir Ralph Mil banke, a baronet in the co. of Durham. Thisunion proved singularly infelicitous. It lasted only a year, and during that brief period, money embarrassments, recriminations, and all the miseries incident to an ill-assorted marriage, were of frequent occurrence. After the birth of her child Ada, lady Byron retired to her father's house, and refused to return. This event, from the celebrity of one of the parties, caused considerable excitement in the fashionable world. B. became the subject of all uncharitable tongues. The most popular poet, he was for a space the most unpopular individual in the country. In one of his letters, written from Italy some years later, referring to the slanders current at the time, he thus expresses himself: "I was accused of every mon strous vice by public rumor and private rancor. My name, which had been a knightly
or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Nor man, was tainted. I felt that if what was whispered, and muttered, and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew." The separation from his wife, and the departure from England, mark a stage in B.'s genius. A new element of power had entered into his verse; the reader feels it quite distinctly in the magnificent burst of exultation that opens the third canto of the Childe Once more upon the waters, yet once more I Misery and indignation stimulated him to remarkable activity. Six months' stay at Geneva produced the third canto of Made Harold and The Prisoner of Chalon. Manfred and The Lament of Tasso were written in 1817. The next year, he was at Venice, and finished Chikk Harold there; and, in the gay and witty Beppo, made an experiment in the new field which lie was afterwards to work so successfully. During the next three years, lie produced the first five cantos of Don Juan, and a number of dramas of various merit, Cain and Werner being opposite poles. In 1822, lie removed to Pisa, and worked there at Don Juan, which poem, with the exception of The Viston of Judgment, occupied his pen almost up to the close of his life. Morally, his Italian life was unsatisfactory, and his genius was tainted by his indulgences. At the close of his career, he was visited by a new inspiration; the sun, so long obscured, shone out gloriously at its setting. In the summer of 1823, he sailed for Greece, to aid the struggle for independence with his influence and money. He arrived at Missolonghi on the 4th of Jan., 1824. There he found nothing but confusion and contending chiefs; but in three months, he succeeded in evoking some kind of order from the turbulent patriotic chaos. His health, however, began to fail. On the 9th of April, he was overtaken by a shower while on horseback, and fever and rheumatism followed. Medical aid was procured, and copious bleeding recommended; but this, B., with characteristic willfulness, opposed. Before death, he sank into a. state of lethargy, and those who were near heard him murmuring about his wife, his sister, and his child. After twenty-four hours' insensibility, he expired on the evening of the 19th April, 1824. His body was conveyed to England; and, denied a resting-place in Westminster abbey, it rests in the family vault in the village church of Hucknall, near Newstead.
Lord B. is a remarkable instance of the fluctuations of literary fashion. Elevated to the highest pinnacle of fame in the heyday of his early popularity, he was unduly depressed after his death, when the false romance which he threw around himself and his writings began to wear away; and it is only during the last twenty or thirty years that the proper place has been found for him in the public estimation. He is high, but not the highest. The resources of his intellect were amazing. He gained his first repu tation as a depicter of the gloomy and stormful passions. After he wrote Beppo, he was surprised to find that he was a humorist; when he reached Greece, he discovered an ability for military organization. When all the school-girls of England fancied their handsome idol with a scowling brow and a curled lip, he was laughing in Italy, and declaring himself to be the most unromantic being in the world. And he was right. Take away all his oriental wrappings, and you discover an honest Englishman, who, above all things, hates cant and humbug. In Don Juan and his Letters there is a won derful fund of wit, sarcasm, humor, and knowledge of man. Few men had a clearer eye for fact and reality. His eloquence, pathos, and despair; his and O'hilde Harold, , were only phases of his mind. Toward the close of his life, he was working toward his real strength, and that lay in wit and the direct representation of human life. If his years bad been extended, he would in all likelihood have deserted poetry for prose, gaudy colored fiction for sober fact; and the assertion may be hazarded, that the English novel would have boasted of another and a greater Fielding.