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LORD BYRON.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

GEORGE GORDON, Lord Byron, was born in London January 22, 1788. He was not in the direct line of the peerage, and when his father died in 1791, he was a poor boy, left in the care of a mother who was incompetent to give him a judicious training. When, by a succession of deaths in the family, he came at ten years of age into possession of a title and of the family estate of Newstead Abbey, he was already warped in mind as he was somewhat deformed in body, being lame from a club-foot. He had his schooling at Harrow, where he was known as a shy, somewhat ungovernable, passionate boy, who formed ardent attachments and took a fierce delight in such sport as he could engage in. It was said that he chose the most ferocious animals for his pets, and he was violent in his expressions. He had, indeed, a large, rich nature, which seemed constantly to be coming under unhappy influences, and from an early day he had a way of hiding his best emotions under a show of indifference and swagger, so that what was at first a kind of mask became in the end almost his familiar countenance.

He passed from Harrow to Trinity College, Cambridge. Both at school and in college he found an outlet for his moods in verse; this was called out by the attachments he formed and by special occasions,

for he always seemed to be swayed by emotions which circumstance or adventure brought to the surface. He published a collection of these poems when he was nineteen, under the title The Hours of Idleness, and the Edinburgh Review, which was casting about for something to bully, fell upon the book with great scorn. Byron retorted with a savage piece of sarcasm, called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which made him better known than his original volume. He took his seat in the House of Lords, but though he had a genius for declamatory speech, he had little interest in the details of government, and he found, moreover, or made, very few friends, so that very shortly he left England with his friend Hobhouse, and spent two years of travel in Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Turkey.

On his return, he found himself in a very embarrassed condition as regards his property; his mother died, and some of his nearest friends, and he was left much alone to the increase of his morbid temper. But during his absence he had begun a poem which, almost in the form of a journal in verse, contained the copious discharge of his poetic feelings, which was now rich in emotion, now satiric and splenetic. This poem was Childe Harold, of which he at first published but two cantos. In speaking of the effect of its publication, he wrote: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." His position was at once changed; from being neglected and solitary, he became the idol of society. In succession, during the two or three years that followed, appeared The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, and Hebrew Melodies, and Byron's position was that of a very popular poet.

He married, January 2, 1815, Miss Milbanke, a beautiful girl, who won his great admiration and whom he had ardently pursued, but whose temperament was precisely the one most ill adapted to master his ungovernable nature. They had one child, Augusta Ada, but little more than a year elapsed after they were married before Lady Byron returned to her father's house and Lord Byron signed a deed of separation.

He made some show in print of his domestic affairs, and the world in which he lived took up the quarrel, for the most part pronouncing against him. In consequence Lord Byron left England in the spring of 1816, never to return. For the next seven years he lived in Switzerland and Italy, and in this period wrote his most notable poetry, more of Childe Harold, The Prisoner of Chillon, The Dream, Mazeppa, Don Juan. He was intimate with Shelley, he was most generous to Leigh Hunt, and he became involved in certain revolutionary movements in Italy. His life was in a manner lawless, as if he had cast away all restraint, but his restless spirit broke forth into impassioned verse, and he wrote poems which flow like rushing turbulent streams through the placid meadows of contemporaneous English literature.

In April, 1823, he began a correspondence with the men who in Greece were attempting the overthrow of Turkish rule, and in July he resolved to throw himself and his fortune into the cause. Accordingly with some friends, some supplies, and some arms, he left Italy for Greece, and though he was somewhat disappointed in the character of his new compatriots, he was steadfast in his enthusiasm. He received an appointment as commander of an expedition against

Lepanto, and showed both bravery and high wisdom in the conduct of the expedition; it failed, but he turned his attention to the fortification of Missolonghi. In the midst of his labors he was taken ill, and after a short sickness, he died April 19, 1824. Public honors were paid to his memory in Greece, and his body was carried back to England, to be buried in the family vault near Newstead.

REFERENCES.

Biographical.

Letters and Journals of

Lord Byron; with Notices of his Life. By 2 vols. 4to. London: 1830.

Thomas Moore, Esq.

The Real Lord Byron. By John Cordy Jeaffreson. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1883.

Life of Lord Byron. By Hon. Roden Noel. (Great Writers Series.) Byron. By John Nichol. (English Men of Letters Series.)

Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. Selected. With introduction by Mathilde Blind. (Camelot Series.)

Dictionary of National Biography. (Article "Byron," by Leslie Stephen.)

Encyclopædia Britannica. (Article "Byron," by William Minto.)

Critical.

Essays in Criticism. Second Series. By Matthew Arnold.
London 1888. (Byron, pp. 163–204.)

8vo.

Critical Essays. By John Morley. 8vo. London: 1886. (Byron, vol. i. pp. 203-251.)

History of English Literature. By Taine. Translated by H. Van Laun. 2 vols. New York: 1872. (Lord Byron, vol. ii. pp. 271-312.) Miscellanies. By Algernon C. Swinburne. London: 1886. (Wordsworth and Byron, pp. 63-156.)

Essays. By Lord Macaulay. 3 vols. Boston: 1901. (Moore's Life of Lord Byron, vol. i. pp. 569-607.)

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON.

A FABLE.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

THE words 'a fable" which Byron added to the title of this poem should put one on his guard against taking the poem as an historical narrative, or treating it in its parts as true to the literal facts of Bonnivard's experience. Byron wrote the poem in June, 1816, at a small inn in the little village of Ouchy, near Lausanne on the shores of Lake Geneva, where he happened to be detained a couple of days by stress of weather. In a notice prefixed to the poem he wrote: "When this poem was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavored to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues." As it was he had been stirred by the tradition of the patriot's confinement in the castle which he had just visited, and with his ardent passion for political liberty which found expression later in Italy and in Greece, he used the incident for an impassioned poetic monologue.

The tourist to-day who visits the castle of Chillon finds abundant historical information respecting the castle and the confinement of Bonnivard. Byron's poem has lifted the place into great distinction. The castle stands on a rock in the lake, not far from Montreux, and is approached by a bridge. In the interior is a range of dungeons. Eight pillars are shown, one of which is half built into the wall. The prisoners, who were sometimes reformers, sometimes prisoners of state, were fettered to the pillars, and the pavement is worn with the footsteps of their brief pace. Francis Bonnivard was born in 1496. He was of gentle birth and inherited a rich priory near Geneva. When the Duke of Savoy attacked the republic of Geneva, Bonnivard joined in the defence, and became thus the enemy of the Duke. Subsequently, when in the service of the republic, he fell into the power of the Duke, who imprisoned him for six years in the castle of Chillon. He was released by the Genevese in 1536, and led a stormy existence until his death in 1571.

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