Byron
George Gordon, Lord (1788-1824), an eminent English poet. His mother was a Gordon of Aberdeenshire. His father was a dissipated captain, John Byron, a man of good family, who deserted his wife soon after the birth of young George. She retired to Aberdeen and lived in a small way, sending her son to the grammar school. His mother's temper and his own appear to have prevented their living happily together. At one time she caressed him, and at another threw the poker at his head, and called him a "lame brat," in allusion to a deformed foot. His playmates said to him, "Your mother's a fool." "I know it," was his answer. In 1798 the death of his grand-uncle, Lord Byron, left him a title, but very little property. He was sent, however, to the school at Harrow. "I soon found," wrote the head master, "that a wild mountain colt had been submitted to my management." In 1805 he entered Cambridge University where he paid little attention to study, but read omnivorously and excelled in outdoor sports. During his college residence he published a volume of verses entitled Hours of Idleness. It was criticized in a rasping, contemptuous manner by the Edinburgh Review. Byron took his time and wrote the famous onslaught known as English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, a satire directed against those who had criticized him. Later he himself called it "a miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony." In 1809 he set out on a tour through Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. On his return he published the first two cantos of Childe Harold. Byron indeed disclaimed all connection between himself and Childe, but the poem reflects only too faithfully his own mental unrest and struggles. It ran through seven editions inside of a month, and a Byron said of himself, he "woke up one morning to find himself famous."
We cannot go into a discussion of Byron's moral conduct. He set at defiance all laws of marriage and morality. He rivals Burns in the facility with which he picked up illicit acquaintances and deified them in verse. In 1815 he married a Miss Millbank, but the ill sorted match was soon dissolved. He appears to have been capable of treating his wife with brutality, and she him with contempt, and yet his Fare Thee Well, a poem written after their separation, is one of the tenderest things in the English language.
Childe Harold was afterward extended by the addition of a third and a fourth canto. Other famous poems are the Prisoner of Chillon, Manfred, Don Juan, Giaour, Corsair, and Bride of Abydos.
In 1816 Byron left England for the continent, and resided at various cities of southern Europe. In 1823 he became interested in the struggles of Greece for independence. He raised all the money he could, and set out for Missolonghi, where he was received with great enthusiasm by the Greeks and given a military command. Before he had been able to render much service, he was seized with a fever and died April 9th. The Greeks desired to bury him there, but his remains were taken home to England. Burial at Westminster was refused on the ground of irreverence, and he was laid at rest by the village church of Hucknall near Newstead Abbey.
See Mazeppa; Chillon; Blanc; Mont; St. Peter'S
QUOTATIONS FROM BYRON.
There a rapture in the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not Man the less; but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
An hour may lay it in the dust.
Must share it,--happiness was born a twin.
And heard Troy doubted: time will doubt of Rome.
Stranger than fiction.
Would it were worthier!
SAID OF BYRON.
In my mind, Byron has been sinking at an accelerated rate for the last ten years, and has now reached a very low level.--Carlyle.
He is so grand, and so English, that from him alone, we shall learn more truths of his country and his age than from all the rest of them put together.--Taine.