BYRON, GEORGE GORDON, sixth Lord (1788 1824 ). One of the greatest of English poets. lie was horn in London. January 22, 1788. and was the only son of Capt. John Byron. of the Guards. and Catherine Gordon of Gight, a Scottish heiress. Captain Byron and his wife did not live happily. The husband was a profligate, and the wife's fortune was soon squandered at the gaming-table. Separated from her husband, Lady Byron retired on an income of £150 a year. to Aberdeen. with her lame boy, whom in her ca priciousness she treated with alternate violence and affection. In his eleventh year Byron granduncle, William, 1,ord and mother and son immediately left the north for Newstead Abbey, the ancient seat of the family, a few miles distant from Nottingham, in the romantic district of Sherwood Forest. OD succeeding to the title. Byron was placed in a private school at Dulwich. and thereafter sent to Harrow (1801). The most remarkable thing about his early years was his extraordinary at tachments. In his eighth year, in Aberdeen shire, he fell in love with Mary Duff. His cousin, Margaret Parker. who died early, was his next idol. His strongest passion, however. was for Mary Chawerth, whom he first nut when on a visit to Newstead in 1803. 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 joined rich es tates. lint it was not to be. Miss Clete erth was Byron's senior by two years. and evidently felt little flattered by the worship of the Iame Harrow boy. Next year came the parting inter \ ieW described in The Dream. in 1SOS Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge. The next year he had a Newark bookseller print for him a volume of his verse, the entire impression of which lie was induced to destroy. With addi tions and omissions, the volume was republished in 1807. Later in the same year Byron made his first real appeat•on•e before the public in //ours of Idleness. The protons contained in this volume were not absolutely without merit; but they might have been written by any well-educated boy who. in addition to ordinary cleverness, pos sessed the slightest touch of poetic sensibility.
The volume was fiercely assailed by Brougham in the Edinburgh Reline, and his sarcasms stung Byron into hemming a poet. Byron attributed the attack to Jeffrey. The satire English Bards and Ecoteh Reriewe•s 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. Byron now withdrew from England, visiting Portugal, Spain. Turkey, and Greece. On his return he published the first two cantos of ChiMc Harold (1812), with immense success, and was at once enrolled among the great poets of his country. During the next two years he produced The Giuour, The Bride of .tbydos, The Corsair, and Lam. While these brilliant pieces were flowing from his pen, he was indulging in all the revel ries and excesses of London society. What was noblest in the man revolted at this mode of life, and in an effort to escape from it, he married, in 1815, Miss .Milbanke, daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke. This union was unfortunate. It lasted only a year, :ind during the brief period money embarrassments, recriminations, and all the miseries incidental 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. Byron became the theme of all uncharitable tongues. The most popular poet. he was for a space the most un popular individual in the country. In one of his letters, written from Italy some years later, re ferring to the slanders current at the time, he said: "I was accused of every monstrous vice of public rumor and private rancor. My name, which has been a knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was tainted. 1 felt that if what was whispered, and muttered, and mur mured was true. 1 was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew." The separation from his wife and the departure from England in 1816, never to return, mark a stage in the development of Byron's genius. A new element of power now entered into his verse.