Meanwhile Byron had settled — if such a word.may be used of his riotous occupation of his domain — at Newstead Abbey, and had repaired it on borrowed money. In March 1809 he took his seat in the House of Lords. Then he prepared himself for a tour of the Con tinent, which was begun with Hobhouse and three servants in July. That Byron was to any marked extent as dissipated and misanthropical as his own Harold does not seem likely.
The travelers sailed to Lisbon and saw something of Portugal, Spain, Malta, Albania and Greece. At Athens Byron finished the first canto of (Childe Harold) and celebrated the charms of his landlady's daughter, Theresa Maui, the (Maid of Athens?) Then the friends visited Asia Minor and reached Constantinople shortly after Byron's famous swim from Sestos to Abydos (3 May 1810). About two months later Hobhouse returned to England and Byron to Athens, where, after a tour of the Morea, he spent the winter of 1810-11 apparently studying and writing and making excursions. He reached England,' by way of Malta, about 20 July 1811.
Throughout his travels he had been in severe financial straits, which his mother had shared. Immediately on his return she was taken ill, and before he could reach her she died. He mourned for her in a passionate way, and the practically simultaneous deaths of three friends also afflicted him and gave him an excuse for writing melancholy verses. He had brought to England the first and second cantos of (Childe Harold' and his paraphrase of the (Ars Poetics,' the 'Hints from The latter, which he is said to have preferred, was immediately accepted by a publisher, but for some reason it did not appear during Byron's life. (Childe Harold,) after some de lay, was the means of uniting its author with his famous publisher, John Murray. It ap peared in March 1812, after Byron had made a successful speech in the House of Lords. As all the world knows he awoke one morning and found himself famous as a poet; it is no wonder that he put a parliamentary career, in which he might have done great good, forever behind him.
It has been for some years fashionable to sneer at the earlier cantos of 'Childe Harold' ; but they are at least effective poetry, and their novel theme and romantic tone fitted them for the early readers who went wild over them. Melancholy and cynicism in a youth were more likely to attract than to shock men and women who were subjects of the Regent and contem poraries of Napoleon. Byron, who had pre viously made a fast friend of his would-be adversary, Thomas Moore (q.v.), became the
social lion of the day. He was young and reckless, and unfortunately gave occasion for scandal through his relations with the notori ous Lady Caroline Lamb and the equally frail Lady Oxford. People could also gossip about his handsome face and his drinking, and his strange diet for the reduction of his dis figuring obesity. His pecuniary difficulties, too, and his folly in presenting the money from his copyrights to his connection, Dallas, doubtless caused tongues to wag. He enjoyed his vogue, but not to such an extent as to grow idle. After the failure of the anonymous (Waltz,' he gave the world 'The Giaour' in May 1813. 'The Bride of Abydos,1 in Decem ber of the same year, and 'The Corsair) two months later. All were dashed off, all were very popular, all deepened the atmosphere of mystery about him. Scott's supremacy as a romantic poet passed to the newcomer, and although the lines on the Princess Charlotte caused some hard feeling and he threatened to quit poetry, Byron continued for two years to have his fling both as a poet and as a gay man of the world. 'Lara> appeared in August 1814; 'Hebrew Melodies' in January 1815; 'The Siege of Corinth) and 'Parisina> in January and February 1816. The sums paid by Murray for these poems — Byron, harassed by deb; at last began to be businesslike — show plainly how well the poet continued to hold his pub lic. Except for such lyrics as She walks in beauty like the night,' the work of this period has in the main failed to hold later generations. This is due no doubt to an unwholesome de sire on the part of a puritanical race "to take it out" upon Byron's far from impeccable char acter and career, as well as to a natural change of taste toward greater polish and refinement, and to the effect of such a story as that its author wrote the first sketch of 'The Bride of Abydos' in four nights after coming home from balls. That latter-day criticism has been alto gether wrong in correcting the excessive praise given by Byron's contemporaries to this facile group of poems cannot be maintained; but it is well to remember that copious power is a good sign of genius, that Byron managed to put into 'The Giaour' not a little narrative vigor and into the whole group of Oriental tales much of the color and the spirit of the East, and that English literature would have been deprived of many beautiful lyric and descriptive pas sages if he had allowed society completely to turn him from writing verse.