..lisery and indignation stimulhted him to re markable activity. Six months' stay at Geneva produced the third canto of Clzilde Harold, and The Prisoner of Chilton. Manfred and The Lament of Tasso were written in 1817. The next year he was at Venice, and finished Childe Pf a rold there: and, in the gay and witty Bcppo, made an experiment in the new field which he was after wards to work so successfully. During the next three years he produced the first five cantos of Don Juan, and a number of dramas of various merit, Cain and ll'crner representing opposite poles. In 1821 he removed to Pisa, and worked there at Don Juan. which, with the exception of The rision of Judgment, occupied his pen almost up to the close of his life. In 1822 Byron, Shel ley. and Leigh Hunt started a Journal called The Liberal. After the tragic death of Shelley in the summer of this year, Byron and Hunt quarreled, and the journal came to a quick close. Morally, Byron's Italian life was licentious, and his genius was tainted by his indulgences. The least censurable of all his moral lapses was his liaison with the Countess Guiceioli. Near the close of his career lie 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 Cephalonia to aid the Greeks in their strug gle for independence. From Cephalonia he went to Missolonghi at the beginning of January, 1824. There he found nothing but confusion and con tending chiefs: but in three he succeeded in evoking some kind of order out of the chaos.
His health, however, heg,an to fail. lie died from exposure and fever, April 19, 1824. llis body was conveyed to England, and buried in the family vault in the village church of Ducknall, mar Newstead.
Lord Byron is a remarkable instance of the fluctuations of literary fashion. Elevated to• the highest pinnacle of fame by his contem poraries, he was unduly decried after his death, when the romance he had thrown 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 hint in the public estimation. The resources
of his intellect were amazing. He gained his first reputation as a depicter of the gloomy and stormful passions. After he wrote Bcppo, lie 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 idol with a scowl ing brow and a curled lip, he was laughing in Italy, and declaring himself to be the most un romantic being in the world. And lie 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. which is his masterpiece, and in his letters, there is a wonderful fund of wit, sarcasm, humor, and knowledge of man. Few men had a clearer eye for fact and reality. His eloquence, pathos, and despair, as in ilanfred and Chible Harold, were only phases of his mind. Toward the close of his life, be was working toward his real strength, and that lay in wit and the direct representation of human life.
Murray, Byron's original publisher, has issued several editions of the complete works. Consult Henley, Works of Lord. Byron (London. 1897 —). The latest edition is that by Coleridge and Prothero (London, 1S9S-1901 ). The best esti mate of Byron is to be found in Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, second series (London, 1 SSS ) . The main source of information as to his life is Moore. Letters and Journals of Byron. with :Vot ices of His Life (London, 1S30, new ed. 1574). Consult, also: Macaulay, Moores Life of Lord Byron (London, 1831) ; Elze, Lord Byron trans., London, 1S72) Jeaffreson, The Real Lord Byron (London. 1883) ; Nichol, "Life," in English Men of Letters series (London, 1880) : Countess Guiecioli, Lord Byron jugd par ics temoins de sa sic (Paris, 18681; English translation by Je•ningham as My Recollections of Lord Byron and Those of Eye-witnesses of This Life (Philadelphia, 1869) : Lady Blessington, Conversations zrith Lord Byron (London, 1834) ; Trelawny, Recollections of Shelley and Byron (Boston, 1858) ; Hunt, Lord Byron and His Contemporaries (London, 1828).