land. But distinguished though his ancestors were, he inherited from them something more than name and station. His father, Captain John Byron, who died when his son was but three years old, was a spendthrift and a heartless rake "Mad Jack Byron " he was called. His grandfather was an admiral, but one whose adventures were wild, stirring, and unfortunate. "Foul-Weather Jack" was his appropriate sobriquet. His granduncle, from

whom he inherited his title and estate, was a notorious hard liver, known as the "wicked lord." His mother, too, was a woman of such ill-balanced character that in her training of her son her conduct could scarcely have been worse. "Byron, your mother is a fool," a schoolfellow once candidly told him. "I know it," was his only and sad reply. With such antecedents as these to influence his heredity, it can scarcely be doubted that much of what is eccentric and abnormal in Byron's character and conduct can well be accounted for. His

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mother's property having all been squandered by his worthless father, Byron's younger years were full of poverty. For a while he was at a school at Aberdeen. At ten years of age he succeeded to his title and estate, but his condition at the time was but little improved thereby, for the estate was heavily encumbered. In his fourteenth year he was sent to the famous school at Harrow. His years at Harrow constituted an important epoch in his life, for it was there that he formed the most of those friendships, all of them honorable and honoring, for which his career is so remarkable. Whatever may

have been the weakness of Byron's character in regard to the affections which he experienced for women, his affections for men, when once he placed them, were noble and enduring. For some time at Harrow he was very unhappy; but after a while he became a leader in the school, and then his life was perhaps the happiest he ever lived.

In 1805, at the age of seventeen, Byron went to Cambridge. Here his old friendships were continued, and some new ones, equally commendable, were formed. But neither at Harrow nor at Cambridge was Byron a student in the ordinary sense of the word. At Harrow he read largely of history and biography, but at Cambridge he spent but little time in serious pursuits of any sort. His life there was, indeed, very irregular. But he practised all sorts of athletic games, rode, boxed, and swam like a young Spartan, and became so expert with the pistol that he was looked upon as a man that could take care of himself in any sort of evil circumstances. In 1808 he left Cambridge, and then spent some time at Newstead Abbey, his ancestral home. But the place

no money to spend became of age and

was badly out of repair, and he had towards improving it. In 1809 he took his seat in the House of Lords. But want of money, reckless living, imprudent adventures and attachments, disappointments in love affairs, and numberless other things had made him tired of life-tired of England especially; and he determined to go abroad. For two years he rambled about in Portugal, Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Greece, Turkey, and Asia Minor. In 1811 he returned to England again. But in the meantime several friends whom he loved dearly had died, and his pecuniary condition had but little improved, so that he found himself even more miserable than he was before he went away.

He

Byron's talent for writing poetry was a natural gift, an endowment of genius, and it gained little or nothing from culture. It was a disposition of the mind which, once indulged in, became a habit. During all his life, after once the habit was formed, though he must have been more occupied than most men, for even Byron's idle pursuits were preoccupying ones, scarcely a month passed that he did not write something that has since proved to be a permanent addition to our literature. began to publish in his eighteenth year, his first production being a small collection of poems, which, because an elderly friend thought one of them somewhat indelicate, he afterward destroyed. In his nineteenth year he published his "Hours of Idleness." This work, though juvenile and weak enough, did not deserve the ferocious attack which some time after was made upon it by a critic in the Edinburgh Review, supposed to be Lord Brougham. Byron took a twelvemonth to prepare his reply, but when

CYTILOBMIY