thin disguise how he treated ladies who compromiseà

themselves for his sake.

Just before he left England, Lady Jersey braved public opinion and gave a party in his honor. Even there he was snubbed and avoided.

He left England, April 25, 1816, never to return. Near Geneva he met Shelley, who, having deserted his wife, was travelling with the brilliant Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin who had already taken his name. Her step-sister, Jane Clairmont, was with them. However subversive of morals such a combination may have been, it was favorable to poetry. During the sojourn on the Swiss lake, Byron wrote much of the third canto of Childe Harold, The Prisoner of Chillon, and other poems; Shelley read and meditated; "Mrs." Shelley produced her tremendous story of Frankenstein.

The English tourists, who deliberately cut the poets and their loves, gratified their curiosity by spying upon them through telescopes. All sorts of monstrous stories were reported. Doubtless Byron with his penchant for making himself out worse than he was, deliberately contributed to the scandal.

Madame de Staël (who after reading his farewell lines had exclaimed, "How gladly would I have been unhappy in Lady Byron's place!") was living at Coppet. Byron went to call upon her. A lady novelist "of mature virtue and maturer years" fainted at the announce. ment of his presence!

In Switzerland Byron tried to arrange for a reconciliation with his wife. She refused it. After that his feelings toward her changed to bitterness, and he wrote

Je

number of savage lines which would better have been left unwritten. Here also he composed parts of Manfred, Prometheus, and other poems inspired by the Alps and showing the influence of Wordsworth and possibly that of Goethe. He now began to take pay for his writings. Between 1816 and 1821 Murray paid him over twelve thousand pounds. For the third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold he received £3,675, equivalent probably at the present time to nearly $25,000.

In October, 1816, Byron went down to Italy and settled in Venice.

Old Roger Ascham says of Italy: —

"She is able to turne a saint into a devil and deprave the best natures, if one will abandon himselfe and become a prey to dissolute courses and wantonesse."

There is an old proverb, " An italianate Inglischyeman is an Incarnate Devil.” Byron for a time at least proved the truth of this proverb.

It seemed as if he wanted to commit a sort of lingering suicide. A weary, homesick, conscience-stricken exile, he exhausted his strength by low debaucheries. Hitherto, for the most part, abstemious and temperate, he now became a glutton, and imbibed quantities of brandy. His propensity to corpulency returned upon him. At the same time he was troubled with malaria and sleeplessness. His palace was filled with lewd revellers. One of his mistresses was the wife of a gondolier - scarcely more cultured than a fishwife.

This wretched, prodigal life lasted till early in 1819, when he suddenly began to have better thoughts. He wrote Tom Moore: "I was obliged to reform my 'way

of life' which was conducting me from the 'yellow leaf' to the ground with all deliberate speed. I am better in health and morals."

At Venice he wrote Beppo, Mazeppa, and the early cantos of Don Juan. The Venetians called him "the English fish," and declared that he "dived for his poetry"! They had good reason: one day he swam from the Lido to the farther end of the grand canal, being four hours and twenty minutes in the water without touching bottom. His income about this time amounted to about £4,000 a year: he gave away a quarter of it in charity. Many who regularly received his benefactions never knew from whom they came. Though so cynical

and with good reason - Byron was remarkably kind to every one. His servants adored him.

At a reception at the Countess Benzoni's in April, 1819, Byron was presented to the sixteen-year-old wife of Count Guiccioli a pretty blonde with fair skin and yellow hair. Her husband was about four times as old as she, and very rich.

Byron became her cicisbeo or legalized lover. This curious state of things was peculiar to Italy: the marriage de convenance demanded a correction in some acknowledgment of human nature. The lady with a husband whom she did not love had a cavalier servente whom she did love.

Byron wrote to Mr. Murray:

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--

Their system has its rules and its fitnesses and its decorums, so as to be reduced to a kind of discipline or game at hearts, which admits few deviations, unless you wish to lose it. . . . They transfer marriage to adul

tery and strike the not out of that commandment. The reason is that they marry for their parents and love for themselves."

Byron prefaced this explanation by declaring that the Englishman could not appreciate such an order of things. "Their moral is not your moral, their life is not your life; you would not understand it." Byron himself at first found it hard to understand it. The count came to call upon him and took him out to drive in his coach and six. He showed no jealousy when the countess accompanied Byron on an excursion that lasted several days. He tried to borrow money of him. He even lodged him at his palace at Ravenna, and made him pay dear for the privilege. Byron was warned that the count might cause him to be assassinated, and for some time he went armed.

After a sudden fit of propriety, in which the husband demanded that there should be no more communication between the lady and her lover, the lady fell ill. Then even her father begged Byron to hasten to her side; the count became complaisant again and remained so till July, 1820, when the Pope, at the solicitation of herself and friends, pronounced a separation beween the husband and wife.

Byron had made the count's house a headquarters for the revolutionary movement. When the Carbonari insurrection was supressed, several of the countess's family were involved. The Gambas were banished from the Romagna, and took refuge first in Florence, then in Pisa.

Byron joined them there in November, 1882. Shelley wrote about this time:

"He has completely recovered his health, and lives a life totally the reverse of that which he led in Venice. Poor fellow! he is completely immersed in politics and literature . . . is greatly improved in every respect, in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness. His connection with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him."

With all respect to Shelley, we may doubt if his judgment on such a point be accepted as correct. Still the countess doubtless caused him to modify Don Juan for the better. It was during these months that he wrote his dramatic works.

Byron had found an object in life. Disappointed in not having succeeded in home politics, he knew that he was meant for public affairs. He threw himself into the popular cause of Italy. He foresaw what it would be if freed and unified. But at that time it was still only a dream. The Austrian monster with its two heads still held the country in its gripe.

Byron spent almost a year in Pisa. While there he received a letter from an English clergyman informing him of a prayer for his conversion offered by his recently deceased wife. Byron replied: "I would not exchange the prayer of this pure and virtuous being in my behalf for the united glory of Homer, Cæsar, and Napoleon.”

While there he also wrote the pathetic letter to his wife asking reconciliation on account of their daughter. It was never sent. The daughter Ada was growing up in utter ignorance of her father. Only a few weeks before her death in 1852, she read her father's poems and learned how she whom he had never seen had