LORD BYRON.

The Prisoner of Chillon, XIII. 47. — She Walks in Beauty, XV. 34.- Maid of Athens, XV. 45. — To Thomas Moore, XV. 110.

EORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON, was born Jan

uary 22, 1788. The place of his birth is generally said to be London, but it is disputed. His grandfather was the celebrated Admiral Byron; his father was Captain John Byron, of the Guards, who died when the boy was three years old; his mother was Catharine Gordon of Gight, a Scottish heiress, most of whose fortune went to pay her husband's debts. The widow went with her little son to live in Aberdeen.

Byron began to make rhymes and love at a very early age. When he was eight years old he declared his affection for Mary Duff, at eleven for Margaret Parker, and at fifteen for Mary Chaworth, whose name his poetry has rendered immortal. In 1798 he succeeded to the lordship, and his mother removed with him to Newstead Abbey, the family scat, in Nottinghamshire. He was sent to school at Harrow, where Charles Lamb and Bryan Waller Procter were among his schoolmates. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1805, but left at the end of two years, without taking a degree. He cared little for the prescribed studies, and stood low in his class; but he read widely and wrote considerably. While in college he printed privately a small volume of poems. The first copy was presented to Rev. John Becher, who found fault with "the luxuriousness of

coloring"; whereupon Byron burned the whole impression, and only Becher's copy and one other escaped. In 1807 he published, at Newark, “Hours of Idleness," which included some poems from the former volume. It contained scarcely anything which any young man of culture might not have written; but it was well received by the ordinary readers and critics, and only the "Edinburgh Review" took pains to find fault with it. The young poet was very angry; encouraged by the general reception of his book, he had gone to work upon a novel, an epic poem, and a satire. Under the sting of the critique he finished the satire, "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and published it in March, 1809. Its indiscriminate attack on nearly all contemporary British poets and critics would have secured it attention if it had been even more boyish and less witty than it was.

In the same month that his satire appeared he took his seat in the House of Lords. He had spent two or three years in reckless dissipation, which had undermined his health; and the estates had come into his possession heavily encumbered, so that their net income was not more than £1,500, a beggarly allowance for a lord. At the same time he was desperately in love with Miss Chaworth, who refused him for very good reasons. Life in England was unendurable; and in June, 1809, he set out on a tour of the Continent, which lasted two years. At Athens he met the beautiful Theresa Macri, daughter of the British vice-consul, who became famous as his "Maid of Athens." He returned to England in July, 1811, and was preparing to publish his "Hints from Horace," when his relative, Robert Charles Dallas,

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expressed his disapproval, and wanted to know if Byron had nothing else in the way of poetry. Byron answered that he had some descriptions, in the Spenserian stanza, of the countries he had been travelling through, but he did not think much of them, and had not intended to publish them. Dallas insisted on seeing the manuscript, which proved to be the first two cantos of Childe Harold," and advised its immediate publication. In correcting the proofs, Byron rewrote large portions of the poem, so that it did not finally issue from the press until February 29, 1812. The effect which it produced is sufficiently described in its author's celebrated saying, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." Murray the publisher gave him £600 for it, which he presented to Dallas. Byron was received at once into the highest literary circles, and became the pet of fashionable society.

In 1813-14 he wrote "The Giaour," "The Bride of Abydos," "The Corsair," "Lara," and some smaller poems. On January 2, 1815, he married Anne Isabella Milbanke, daughter of a baronet. In December of the same year, their daughter Ada was born; and in January, 1816, Lady Byron went home to her father's house, and never returned to her husband. What were the causes of the separation it is impossible to say and unfair to guess. For Byron's "Memoirs," in which he gave his side of the story, were intrusted to Moore the poet, who, at the solicitation of Lady Byron's relatives, permitted the manuscript to be burned. Lady Byron died in 1860; and ten years later Mrs. Stowe published "Lady Byron Vindicated," an explanation of the affair received from

Lady Byron herself, which excited warm discussion on both sides of the Atlantic. The British public very generally sided with the wife, the intensity of its partisanship being, as usual, in proportion to its ignorance of the facts. The husband was not only frowned upon and vilified, but actually mobbed, and in April he left England forever. It was on this occasion that he wrote his farewell lines to Thomas Moore.

He went first to Brussels, then up the Rhine, and reached Geneva in May, where he met Shelley. There he began "Manfred" and wrote the third canto of "Childe Harold" and "The Prisoner of Chillon." The hero of the last-named poem was François de Bonnivard, who was born in 1496, and died in 1571. He was an author and politician, and sided with the republic of Geneva against the Duke of Savoy, for which the Duke had him imprisoned in the castle of Chillon, where he remained six years, and was then liberated by his countrymen. The dungeon is still shown, and, of course, the pillar is covered with names of visitors, among which is Byron's.

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In 1817 Byron removed to Venice, and there finished Manfred," and wrote the fourth canto of "Childe Harold," "Beppo," "The Lament of Tasso," and five cantos of Don Juan." In Venice he first met Teresa Gamba, then newly married to Count Guiccioli, who was foolishly fond of Byron, and seems to have made no very serious objection to the relations which sprang up between his wife and the profligate poet. In 1822 the Countess procured from the Pope a bill of separation from her husband, and then lived with Byron until the

summer of 1823, when he went to take part with the Greeks in their struggle for independence. He landed at Missolonghi in January, 1824, and went to work at once to effect a proper military organization. In this he had made considerable progress, when he took a heavy cold from being caught in a shower, and on April 19th he died. The Greeks asked for his heart, and sealed it in an urn, which was lost in the confusion that followed the siege of Missolonghi. His body was taken to England, and, being denied a place in Westminster Abbey, was buried in Hucknall Torkard church, near Newstead. 'She Walks in Beauty" is the first of his much-admired "Hebrew Melodies," twenty-three lyrics written for music.

The standard life of Byron is Moore's, which includes his letters and journals.

In the summer of 1875 a movement for a public statue of Lord Byron was started in London. At a meeting of the committee in July, Mr. Disraeli made a speech in which he said: "For twelve years he poured out a series of complete inventions, which are not equalled for their number and their consistency of purpose in the literature of any country, ancient or modern. Admirable for many qualities, for their picturesqueness, their wit, their passion, they are most distinguished by their power of expression and by the sublime energy of their imagination. And then, after twelve years, he died; he died in the fulness of his fame, having enjoyed in his lifetime a degree of celebrity which has never fallen to the lot of any other literary man, - not only admired in his own country, but reverenced and adored in Europe."