George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in London, January 22, 1788, and
died at Missolonghi, April 19, 1824, at the age of thirty-six. Byron's
father, a captain in the guards, after a romantic first marriage, wedded
Catharine Gordon, a wealthy girl, of Aberdeenshire, whom, after
squandering her fortune, he deserted shortly after young Byron's birth.
Byron's mother was a quick-tempered, impulsive woman, ill-fitted to
bring up a son who had a temperament almost exactly like her own. Once
when a companion said to Byron, "Your mother's a fool," the boy
answered, "I know it."
As a boy at school Byron formed passionate attachments, entered into the
games he played with an unusual fierceness of spirit, and exhibited that
sensitive pride which was the cause of much of his posing there and in
later life. He was club-footed, a deformity about which he was extremely
sensitive. Before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1805, he had
attended Harrow for five years. At Cambridge he remained less than three
years, but in that time made some close friends and took an active part
in all sorts of sports, especially riding and swimming. His vacations he
spent at London or Southwell, generally quarrelling violently with his
mother.
His first published poetry was _Hours of Idleness_, which appeared in
1807, and which was attacked by the _Edinburgh Review_ so strenuously
that Byron replied in 1809 with _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. In
the same year he took his seat in the House of Lords, but he had no
interest in politics, and, accordingly, left England for two years'
travel on the continent. This tour was the occasion of the first two
cantos of _Childe Harold_. This poem was received so warmly that Byron
remarked that "he awoke one morning to find himself famous." From now
till the separation from his wife in 1816, after a year of wedded life,
he was the lion of British society, but society took sides on this
family difference, and as most of them sympathized with Lady Byron,
Byron himself left England. He spent some time on Lake Geneva, where the
Castle of Chillon is situated. He then went to Italy, where, amid his
usual life of dissipation, he became interested in the Italian
Insurrection. Among his friends and companions in Italy were Shelley
and Leigh Hunt. In 1823, becoming attracted by the attempts of the
Greeks to overthrow Turkish rule, he went to Greece as a leader, but he
contracted a fever at Missolonghi, where he died, April 19, 1824.
As a poet Byron appeals especially to youth. His tales are so
interesting that Scott made the remark that Byron beat him at his own
game. Rapidity and force of movement, intensity and passion, excellent
description, and a great, though not fine, command of poetic sound are
the chief characteristics of his poetry. The romantic tale, _Childe
Harold_, and the satire, _Don Juan_, are perhaps his best-known works.