Life in London; Tom Moore; "Childe Harold " Upon his return to England Byron entered on the fourth period of his life, that of his extraordinary London career, his first literary fame, his marriage, and his subsequent unpopularity. At this period began his warm friendship with the famous Irish poet, Tom Moore, whom he had ridiculed in English Bards. The Irishman generously forgave the attack, and the two became the best of friends. Moore's biography of his fellow-poet, The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, is one of the most admirable books of its kind in existence, -discriminating, trustworthy, and sympathetic. Shortly after his return, Byron was asked by his relative, Dallas what poems he had brought back with him. The poet handed over to his friend an inferior satire which he had named Hints from Horace. Dallas, disappointed, asked, "Have you no other result of your travels?" To this Byron answered, "A few short pieces, and a lot of Spenserian stanzas; not worth troubling you with, but you are welcome to them." These " 'Spenserian stanzas of which their author thought so little were the first two cantos of Childe Harold, whose publication, in the spring of 1812, brought immediate and widespread popularity. "I awoke one morning and found myself famous," said the poet. These first two cantos of Childe Harold, with their melancholy young hero, their declamatory rhetoric, and their commonplaces, were exactly on the level of their age, and suited the public taste to perfection. It may be doubted whether the two later and infinitely finer cantos, written several years afterwards, could possibly have created so tremendous a sensation. Byron's youth, personal beauty, rank, and genius now lifted him to the pinnacle of social favor. He posed as a mere literary dilettante, a lord who amused himself by occasional ventures into literature, and aimed to discriminate sharply between professional writers, whom he affected to despise, and men of rank who condescended to dabble in letters. This, however, was only a phase, and passed away as Byron grew to take his art more seriously. These were years Byron's social and liter- of unalloyed social and literary triumphs; also, ary popularity it must be confessed, of dissipation, and of poetic power expended upon unworthy achievements. But Byron's literary activity was remarkable. The success of his Childe Harold stimulated him to further effort. His verse romances of Eastern life poured forth in astonishing profusion. Between May, 1813 and 1816, The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, The Siege of Corinth, and Parisina were written and published. All are variations on one single theme, with but one hero under many disguises, and that hero Byron himself. Some of these tales were written in the meter that Scott had rendered popular, and, though inferior in many ways to Marmion and its companion pieces, quite eclipsed the fresher and more wholesome romances of the older poet. On the first day of its publication The Corsair sold ten thousand copies; and the total profits from all the tales amounted to several thousand pounds. But Byron wrote for love of writing, not for money, though he needed the latter badly enough; so with characteristic generosity he handed over the proceeds to his rather ungrateful relative, Dallas. The Giaour is perhaps the best of these tales, now little read and almost forgotten, which represent the literary fashion of a day, and to the taste of the present generation seem commonplace and crude. Hebrew Melodies, however, published early in 1815, contained some excellent lyrics, among others the matchless She Walks in Beauty and the favorite Destruction of Sennacherib. The Eastern Byron made several speeches in Parliament, and created a favorable impression. As a born orator and a vigorous protester against what he considered oppression and tyranny, he might, Byron in Par- perhaps, have become a great parliamentary figure; liament but it is fortunate for literature that his energies were turned into other channels. At this time Byron wore an air of rather pretentious melancholy, which probably was sincere enough, but of which he was entirely too conscious. Though not without some excuse for his despondency, the death of his mother, the recent loss of several intimate friends, the constant sense of his lameness, - he was still a born actor, and happy only when in the limelight. The pose was popular and effective. In Byron's melancholy; Au- London, Byronic melancholy became the vogue. gusta Leigh Even the poet's very peculiarities of dress were imitated. Into this unwholesome atmosphere entered at least one refreshing influence. Augusta Leigh, Byron's half-sister, visited him in London in June, 1813. This visit strengthened their mutual affection, and the strong and beautiful bonds binding the brother and sister together were severed only by death. Among all the great men whom the poet met in his London life, none impressed him more than Scott. The mighty "Wizard of the North," whose poetic star had been eclipsed by Childe Harold, extended to the younger poet a generous appreciation and sympathy that could not fail to conciliate even one so resentful as Byron of any air of patronage and condescension. The two met in London in the spring of 1815, and again in September of the same year. Of Byron, Scott said: "What I liked about him, besides his boundless genius, was his generosity of spirit as well as of purse, and his utter contempt of all the affectations of literature. He wrote from impulse, never from effort, and therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetic geniuses of my time, and of half a century Walter Scott before me. We have many men of high poetic talents, but none of that ever-gushing and perennial fountain of natural waters." Marriage to Byron felt that the time had come for him to marry; and he now, at the age of twenty-six, deliberately made his choice - or, rather, allowed it to be made for him. Anna Isabella Milbanke was pretty, clever, and accomplished. More than this, she was the daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, and an heiress. A marriage was finally arranged between the poet, who needed money, and the heiress, who appreciated fame and social position. The marriage, which took place on January 2, 1815, was bound to be unhappy, and so it proved. Lady Byron probably at first loved her husband, but loved herself more, and was quite intolerant banke; sepa- of such irregularities as marked his social career; and Byron's character — impatient of restraint, self-centered, moody, passionate-was unintelligible to her. Only a year passed before Lady Byron, with her daughter Ada, one month old, left her husband forever. Her conduct has never been explained; and Byron, so garrulous about most of his private affairs, maintained on this one topic an almost complete silence. It is enough for us to know that their temperaments were incompatible. But the whole affair is so notorious, and bore so important a relation to the poet's after life, that it cannot be passed over without some mention. ration The separation marked the reaction of favor against the darling of society. The British public, according to Macaulay, now entered upon "one of its periodical fits of morality." Byron had been overpraised; he was now to be heartily condemned. Though he was no worse than other men of the same set, his misdemeanors were retailed, and innumerable Unpopularity scandals about him were wholly invented. The small literary fry, who envied his success, joyously swarmed about to smirch his name; the newspapers attacked him -- unsparingly and bitterly; an unfortunate and tactless poem, which he wrote in an angry mood, added to the universal indignation. Byron was ostracized from society — was even hissed on the streets. He had before been famous; he was now infamous. There was only one thing for him to do, to leave England forever. Years later he wrote: "The press was active and scurrilous. My name which had been a knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman was tainted. I felt that if what was whispered and muttered and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me." So in April, 1816, he left his country, home, and friends. His finances were, as usual, in a tangle. Two parture from years later Newstead had to be sold, and the proceeds ninety thousand pounds — went mostly to pay off mortgages and debts. With this final departure from England began the fifth and last period of the poet's life. Final de England Byron's exile opened a new and better era of his poetic activity. It revealed to him a new world, and it was a tonic to his energies. Without it he might never have proved so great a poet and so powerful a force in European literature. He sailed first for Ostend, and traveled through Belgium, visiting Brussels, where his imagination heard the "sound of revelry by night," and Waterloo, where his "tread was on an empire's dust"; he went up the Rhine, his "exulting and abounding river,” and thence to Basel, Bern, Lausanne, and Geneva. At the last-named city he met Shelley. Byron now came into intimate contact with a poet whose idealism profoundly attracted him. Shelley taught him many things, and his influByron in Switzerland; ence is seen in several of Byron's productions, Shelley from the noble Prometheus to the more elaborate Prisoner of Chillon. Byron's attitude towards Shelley's poetry was not always favorable, indeed, it is doubtful if he fully |