BYRON, George Gordon, 6th lord, Eng lish poet: b. London, 22 Jan. 17:: ; d. Misso longhi, Greece, 19 April 1824. He was the son of 'Wad Jack Byron,' a good-looking, profligate soldier, who first married the divorced Marchioness of Carmarthen, and had by her a daughter Augusta, later Mrs. Leigh. Captain Byron became a widower in 1784 and, a little more than a year later, married a Scotch heiress, Catherine Gordon of Gight. Their only child, the poet, was born at No. 16 Holles street, Cavendish Square, and was lame from birth, owing to a defect in one of his ankles. The influences surrounding the child were de plorable. John Byron, to escape his creditors, had to flee to France, where he died in 1791. Mrs. Byron, with a much reduced income, resided in Aberdeen and proved to be a most indiscreet mother, now fondly petting her child, now reviling him. She was actually guilty of reproaching him for his lameness. The boy himself was capable of great affection for his nurse and for a cousin, Mary Duff, and his schoolmates seem to have regarded him as warm-hearted. His education was not neglected during his early years, but tutors and schools could not make up for his lack of training at home. He learned, however, to love nature amid the Scotch hills.
In 1794 the grandson of the then Lord Byron died, and the six-year-old boy became heir to the peerage, which he inherited in 1798. Then his mother obtained a pension and left Scotland, Byron being made a ward in chan cery and Lord Carlisle being appointed his guardian, though his mother s lawyer, John Hanson, really looked after his welfare. A quack tortured his foot, and schoolmasters tried to make him studious, his main mental nutriment consisting, apparently, of the Bible and poetry. He wrote love verses to a young cousin, endured his mother's caprices and was doubtless glad to be entered at Harrow in 1801, where, however, he was at first discon tented and not liked. He could not make a scholar of himself, though, as Mr. Coleridge has shown, his classical attainments have been much underrated; but he was a good declaimer and through his pluck in fighting and in athletics, despite his deformity, he became a leader in the school. He was romantically devoted to his friends, and once offered to take half the thrashing a bully was giving to the boy who later was known as Sir Robert Peel. Impul
siveness characterized both his insubordinate attitude toward the school authorities and his love affair with his cousin and senior, Mary Anne Chaworth, who soon married and left him disconsolate. His affection for her seems never to have been entirely effaced. Altogether, his childhood and youth were well adapted to produce a wayward man.
In October 1805 he went into residence as a nobleman at Trinity College, Cambridge. He took full advantage of his privileges, ran into debt, though he had an allowance of L500 a year, gambled, consorted with pugilists, won fame as a swimmer, traveled about in style, and, last, but not least, after stormy quarrels with his mother, successfully asserted his claim to be his own master. He formed some warm friendships with promising students, notably with John Cam Hobhouse, afterward Lord Broughton (q.v.) ; he dabbled in literature and wrote verses, and he received his M.A. (by special privilege as a peer,' in July 1808.
Nearly two years previously he had printed 'Fugitive Pieces,' a volume of poetry, but had destroyed all save two or three copies because a clergyman friend had objected to one poem as too free. A small edition of what was prac tically the same book, Poems on Various Oc appeared early in 1807. A few months later this was reissued with consider able alterations as of Idleness,) which was again altered in a second edition of March 1808, two months after the now famous slash ing review from the pen of Brougham had appeared in the Edinburgh Review.
Byron's youthful volume certainly gave little indication of the genius he was soon to display, but it called for no severe chastisement. Hence, the editor of the Edinburgh, Jeffrey, got only what he deserved when Byron pil loried him in 'English Bards and Scotch Re which appeared anonymously about the middle of March 1809, and was at once successful. It is still decidedly readable in parts and ranks with the best satires of its kind. It went through five editions in two years, the last being suppressed by its author, because he had become the friend of many of his victims.