A considerable portion of Buxtorf's public life was spent in controversy

regarding disputed points in biblical criticism, in reference to which he

had to defend his father's views. The attitude of the Reformed churches at

that time, as opposed to the Church of Rome, led them to maintain many

opinions in regard to biblical questions which were not only erroneous, but

altogether unnecessary for the stability of their position. Having

renounced the dogma of an infallible church, it was deemed necessary to

maintain as a counterpoise, not only that of an infallible Bible, but, as

the necessary foundation of this, of a Bible which had been handed down

from the earliest ages without the slightest textual alteration. Even the

vowel points and accents were held to have been given by divine

inspiration. The Massoretic text of the Old Testament, therefore, as

compared either with that of the recently discovered Samaritan Pentateuch,

or the Septuagint or of the Vulgate, alone contained the true words of the

sacred writers. Although many of the Reformers, as well as learned Jews,

had long seen that these assertions could not be made good, there had been

as yet no formal controversy upon the subject. Louis Cappel (_q.v._) was

the first effectually to dispel the illusions which had long prevailed by a

work on the modern origin of the vowel points and accents. The elder

Buxtorf had counselled him not to publish his work, pointing out the injury

which it would do the Protestant cause, but Cappel sent his MS. to Thomas

Erpenius of Leiden, the most learned orientalist of his day, by whom it was

published in 1624, under the title _Arcanum Punctationis revelatum_, but

without the author's name. The elder Buxtorf, though he lived five years

after the publication of the work, made no public reply to it, and it was

not until 1648 that Buxtorf junior published his _Tractatus de punctorum

origine, antiquitate, et authoritate, oppositus Arcano punctationis

revelato Ludovici Cappelli_. He tried to prove by copious citations from

the rabbinical writers, and by arguments of various kinds, that the points,

if not so ancient as the time of Moses, were at least as old as that of

Ezra, and thus possessed the authority of divine inspiration. Unfortunately

he allowed himself to employ contemptuous epithets towards Cappel, such as

"innovator" and "visionary." Cappel speedily prepared a second edition of

his work, in which, besides replying to the arguments of his opponent, and

fortifying his position with new ones, he retorted his contumelious

epithets with interest. Owing to various causes, however, this second

edition did not see the light until 1685, when it was published at

Amsterdam in the edition of his collected works. Besides this controversy,

Buxtorf engaged in three others with the same antagonist, on the subject of

the integrity of the Massoretic text of the Old Testament, on the antiquity

of the present Hebrew characters, and on the Lord's Supper. In the two

former Buxtorf supported the untenable position that the text of the Old

Testament had been transmitted to us without any errors or alteration, and

that the present square or so-called Chaldee characters were coeval with

the original composition of the various books. These views were

triumphantly refuted by his great opponent in his _Critica Sacra_, and in

his _Diatriba veris et antiquis Ebraicorum literis_.

Besides the works already mentioned in the course of this article, Buxtorf

edited the great _Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum, et Rabbinicum_, on which

his father had spent the labour of twenty years, and to the completion of

which he himself gave ten years of additional study; and the great Hebrew

_Concordance_, which his father had little more than begun. In addition to

these, he published new editions of many of his father's works, as well as

others of his own, complete lists of which may be seen in the _Athenae

Rauricae_ and other works enumerated at the close of the preceding article.

BUYING IN, on the English stock exchange, a transaction by which, if a

member has sold securities which he fails to deliver on settling day, or

any of the succeeding ten days following the settlement, the buyer may give

instructions to a stock exchange official to "buy in" the stock required.

The official announces the quantity of stock, and the purpose for which he

requires it, and whoever sells the stock must be prepared to deliver it

immediately. The original seller has to pay the difference between the two

prices, if the latter is higher than the original contract price. A similar

practice, termed "selling out," prevails when a purchaser fails to take up

his securities.

BUYS BALLOT'S LAW, in meteorology, the name given to a law which may be

expressed as follows:--"Stand with your back to the wind; the low-pressure

area will be on your left-hand." This rule, the truth of which was first

recognized by the American meteorologists J.H. Coffin and W. Ferrel, is a

direct consequence of Ferrel's Law (_q.v._). It is approximately true in

the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and is reversed in the

Southern Hemisphere, but the angle between barometric gradient and wind is

not a right angle in low latitudes. The law takes its name from C.H.D. Buys

Ballot, a Dutch meteorologist, who published it in the _Comptes rendus_,

November 1857.

BUZEU, the capital of the department of Buzeu, Rumania, situated near the

right bank of the river Buzeu, between the Carpathian Mountains and the

fertile lowlands of south Moldavia and east Walachia. Pop. (1900) 21,561.

Buzeu is important as a market for petroleum, timber and grain. It is the

meeting [v.04 p.0895] place of railroads from Râmnicu Sarat, Braila and

Ploesci. Amber is found by the riverside, and there are cloth-mills in the

city. Buzeu is the seat of a bishop, whose cathedral was erected in 1640 by

Prince Matthias Bassarab of Walachia, on the site of an older church. In

the neighbourhood there are many monasteries. Buzeu was formerly called

Napuca or Buzograd.

BUZOT, FRANÇOIS NICOLAS LÉONARD (1760-1794), French revolutionist, was born

at Evreux on the 1st of March 1760. He studied law, and at the outbreak of

the Revolution was an advocate in his native town. In 1789 he was elected

deputy to the states-general, and there became known for his advanced

opinions. He demanded the nationalization of the possessions of the clergy,

and the right of all citizens to carry arms. After the dissolution of the

Constituent Assembly, Buzot returned to Evreux, where he was named

president of the criminal tribunal. In 1792 he was elected deputy to the

Convention, and took his place among the Girondists. He demanded the

formation of a national guard from the departments to defend the Convention

against the populace of Paris. His proposal was carried, but never put into

force; and the Parisians were extremely bitter against him and the

Girondists. In the trial of Louis XVI., Buzot voted for death, but with

appeal to the people and postponement of sentence. He had a decree of death

passed against the _émigrés_ who did not return to France, and against

anyone who should demand the re-establishment of the monarchy. Proscribed

with the Girondists on the 2nd of June 1793, he succeeded in escaping, and

took refuge in Normandy, where he contributed to organize a federalist

insurrection against the Convention, which was speedily suppressed. Buzot

was outlawed, and fled to the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, and committed

suicide in the woods of St Émilion on the 18th of June 1794. He was an

intelligent and honest man, although he seems to have profited by the sale

of the possessions of the clergy, but he had a stubborn, unyielding

temperament, was incapable of making concessions, and was dominated by

Madame Roland, who imparted to him her hatred of Danton and the

Montagnards.

See _Mémoires de Pétion, Barbaroux, Buzot_, published by C.A. Daubon

(Paris, 1866). For the history of the federalist movement in Normandy, see

L. Boivin Champeaux, _Notices pour servir à, l'histoire de la Révolution

dans le département de l'Eure_ (Evreux and Paris, 1884).

BUZZARD, a word derived from the Lat. _Buteo_, through the Fr. _Busard_,

and used in a general sense for a large group of diurnal birds-of-prey,

which contains, among many others, the species usually known as the common

buzzard (_Buteo vulgaris_, Leach), though the English epithet is nowadays

hardly applicable. The name buzzard, however, belongs quite as rightfully

to the birds called in books "harriers," which form a distinct subfamily of

_Falconidae_ under the title _Circinae_, and by it one species, the

moor-buzzard (_Circus aeruginosus_), is still known in such places as it

inhabits. "Puttock" is also another name used in some parts of England, but

perhaps is rather a synonym of the kite (_Milvus ictinus_). Though

ornithological writers are almost unanimous in distinguishing the buzzards

as a group from the eagles, the grounds usually assigned for their

separation are but slight, and the diagnostic character that can be best

trusted is probably that in the former the bill is decurved from the base,

while in the latter it is for about a third of its length straight. The

head, too, in buzzards is short and round, while in the eagles it is

elongated. In a general way buzzards are smaller than eagles, though there

are several exceptions to this statement, and have their plumage more

mottled. Furthermore, most if not all of the buzzards, about which anything

of the kind is with certainty known, assume their adult dress at the first

moult, while the eagles take a longer time to reach maturity. The buzzards

are fine-looking birds, but are slow and heavy of flight, so that in the

old days of falconry they were regarded with infinite scorn, and hence in

common English to call a man "a buzzard" is to denounce him as stupid.

Their food consists of small mammals, young birds, reptiles, amphibians and

insects--particularly beetles--and thus they never could have been very

injurious to the game-preserver, if indeed they were not really his

friends, though they have fallen under his ban; but at the present day they

are so scarce that in England their effect, whatever it may be, is

inappreciable. Buzzards are found over the whole world with the exception

of the Australian region, and have been split into many genera by

systematists. In the British Islands are two species, one resident (the _B.

vulgaris_ already mentioned), and now almost confined to a few wooded

districts; the other the rough-legged buzzard (_Archibuteo lagopus_), an

irregular winter-visitant, sometimes arriving in large bands from the north

of Europe, and readily distinguishable from the former by being feathered

down to the toes. The honey-buzzard (_Pernis apivorus_), a summer-visitor

from the south, and breeding, or attempting to breed, yearly in the New

Forest, does not come into the subfamily _Buteoninae_, but is probably the

type of a distinct group, _Perninae_, of which there are other examples in

Africa and Asia. In America the name "buzzard" is popularly given to the

turkey-buzzard or turkey-vulture (_Cathartes Aura_).

(A. N.)

BYELAYA TSERKOV (_i.e._ White Church), a town of Russia, in the government

of Kiev, 32 m. S.S.W. of Vasilkov, on the main road from Kiev to the

Crimea, in 49° 47' N. lat. and 30° 7' E. long. Pop. (1860) 12,075; (1897)

20,705. First mentioned in 1155, Byelaya Tserkov was destroyed during the

Mongol invasion of the 13th century. In 1550 a castle was built here by the

prince of Kiev, and various privileges were bestowed upon the inhabitants.

From 1651 the town was subject alternately to Poland and to independent

hetmans (Cossack chiefs). In 1793 it was united to Russia. There is a trade

in beer, cattle and grain, sold at eleven annual fairs, three of which last

for ten days each.

BYELEV, a town of Russia, in the government of Tula, and 67 m. S.W. from

the city of that name on the left bank of the Oka, in 53° 48' N. lat., and

36° 9' E. long. Pop. (1860) 8063; (1897) 9567. It is first mentioned in

1147. It belonged to Lithuania in the end of the 14th century; and in 1468

it was raised to the rank of a principality, dependent on that country. In

the end of the 15th century this principality began to attach itself to the

grand-duchy of Moscow; and by Ivan III. it was ultimately united to Russia.

It suffered greatly from the Tatars in 1507, 1512, 1530, 1536 and 1544. In

1826 the empress Elizabeth died here on her way from Taganrog to St

Petersburg. A public library was founded in 1858 in memory of the poet

Zhukovsky, who was born (1782) in a neighbouring village. The industries

comprise tallow-boiling, oil-manufacture, tanning, sugar-refining and

distilling. There is a trade in grain, hemp oil, cattle and tallow. A fair

is held from the 28th of August to the 10th of September every year.

BYELGOROD (_i.e._ White Town), a town of Russia, in the government of

Kursk, 100 m. S.S.E. by rail from the city of that name, in 50° 46' N. lat.

and 36° 37' E. long., clustering on a chalk hill on the right bank of the

Donets. Pop. (1860) 11,722; (1897) 21,850. In the 17th century it suffered

repeatedly from Tatar incursions, against which there was built (from 1633

to 1740) an earthen wall, with twelve forts, extending upwards of 200 m.

from the Vorskla to the Don, and called the Byelgorod line. In 1666 an

archiepiscopal see was established in the town. There are two cathedral

churches, both built in the 16th century, as well as a theological

seminary. Candles, leather, soap, lime and bricks are manufactured, and a

trade is carried on in grain, cattle, wool, honey, wax and tallow. There

are three annual fairs, on the 10th Friday after Easter, the 29th of June

and the 15th of August respectively.

BYELOSTOK (Polish, _Bialystok_), a town of West Russia, in the government

of and 53 m. by rail S.W. of the city of Grodno, on the main railway line

from Moscow to Warsaw, at its junction with the Kiev-Grayevo (Prussian

frontier) line. Founded in 1320, it became part of Prussia after the third

partition of Poland, but was annexed to Russia in 1807, after the peace of

Tilsit. Its development dates from 1845, when woollen-mills were built.

Since that time it has grown very rapidly, its population being 13,787 in

1857; 56,629 in 1889; and 65,781 in 1901, three-fourths Jews. Its woollen,

silk and felt hat factories give occupation to several thousand workers.

[v.04 p.0896] BYEZHETSK, a town of Russia, in the government of Tver, and

70 m. N.N.E. of the city of that name, on the right bank of the Mologa, in

57° 46' N. lat. and 36° 43' E. long. Pop. (1860) 5423; (1897) 9090. It is

mentioned in the chronicles of 1137. On the fall of Novgorod, to which it

had belonged, it was incorporated (1479) with the grand-duchy of Moscow.

The town is famous for its scythes and shearing hooks, but makes also axes,

nails and other hardware, and trades in grain, linen, hemp and flax.

BY-LAW, or BYE-LAW (_by-_ being used in the sense of subordinate or

secondary, cf. by-path), a regulation made by councils, boards,

corporations and companies, usually under statutory power, for the

preservation of order and good government within some place or

jurisdiction. When made under authority of a statute, by-laws must

generally, before they come into operation, be submitted to some confirming

authority for sanction and approval; when approved, they are as binding as

enacted laws. By-laws must be reasonable in themselves; they must not be

retrospective nor contrary to the general law of the land. By various

statutes powers are given to borough, county and district councils, to make

by-laws for various purposes; corporate bodies, also, are empowered by

their charters to make by-laws which are binding on their members. Such

by-laws must be in harmony with the objects of the society and must not

infringe or limit the powers and duties of its officers.

BYLES, MATHER (1706-1788), American clergyman, was born in Boston,

Massachusetts, on the 26th of March 1706, descended, on his mother's side,

from John Cotton and Richard Mather. He graduated at Harvard in 1725, and

in 1733 became pastor of the Hollis Street church (Congregational), Boston.

He held a high rank among the clergy of the province and was noted for his

scholarly sermons and his ready wit. At the outbreak of the War of

Independence he was outspoken in his advocacy of the royal cause, and after

the British evacuation of Boston his connexion with his church was

dissolved. He remained in Boston, however, and subsequently (1777) was

arrested, tried and sentenced to deportation. This sentence was later

changed to imprisonment in his own house. He was soon released, but never

resumed his pastorate. He died in Boston on the 5th of July 1788. Besides

many sermons he published _A Poem on the Death of George I._ (1727) and

_Miscellaneous Poems_ (1744).

His son, MATHER BYLES (1735-1814), graduated at Harvard in 1751, and was a

Congregational clergyman at New London, Connecticut, until 1768, when he

entered the Established Church, and became rector of Christ church, Boston.

Sympathizing with the royal cause, he settled, after the War of

Independence, in St Johns, New Brunswick, where he was rector of a church

until his death.

BYNG, JOHN (1704-1757), British admiral, was the fourth son of George Byng,

Lord Torrington, and entered the navy in 1718. The powerful influence of

his father accounts for his rapid rise in the service. He received his

first appointment as lieutenant in 1723, and became captain in 1727. His

career presents nothing of note till after his promotion as rear-admiral in

1745, and as vice-admiral in 1747. He served on the most comfortable

stations, and avoided the more arduous work of the navy. On the approach of

the Seven Years' War the island of Minorca was threatened by an attack from

Toulon and was actually invaded in 1756. Byng, who was then serving in the

Channel with the rank of admiral, which he attained in 1755, was ordered to

the Mediterranean to relieve the garrison of Fort St Philip, which was

still holding out. The squadron was not very well manned, and Byng was in

particular much aggrieved because his marines were landed to make room for

the soldiers who were to reinforce the garrison, and he feared that if he

met a French squadron after he had lost them he would be dangerously

undermanned. His correspondence shows clearly that he left prepared for

failure, that he did not believe that the garrison could hold out against

the French force landed, and that he was already resolved to come back from

Minorca if he found that the task presented any great difficulty. He wrote

home to that effect to the ministry from Gibraltar. The governor of the

fortress refused to spare any of his soldiers to increase the relief for

Minorca, and Byng sailed on the 8th of May. On the 19th he was off Minorca,

and endeavoured to open communications with the fort. Before he could land

any of the soldiers, the French squadron appeared. A battle was fought on

the following day. Byng, who had gained the weather gauge, bore down on the

French fleet of M. de la Galissonière at an angle, so that his leading

ships came into action unsupported by the rest of his line. The French cut

the leading ships up, and then slipped away. When the flag captain pointed

out to Byng that by standing out of his line he could bring the centre of

the enemy to closer action, he declined on the ground that Thomas Mathews

had been condemned for so doing. The French, who were equal in number to

the English, got away undamaged. After remaining near Minorca for four days

without making any further attempt to communicate with the fort or sighting

the French, Byng sailed away to Gibraltar leaving Fort St Philip to its

fate. The failure caused a savage outburst of wrath in the country. Byng

was brought home, tried by court-martial, condemned to death, and shot on

the 14th of March 1757 at Portsmouth. The severity of the penalty, aided by

a not unjust suspicion that the ministry sought to cover themselves by

throwing all the blame on the admiral, led in after time to a reaction in

favour of Byng. It became a commonplace to say that he was put to death for

an error of judgment. The court had indeed acquitted him of personal

cowardice or of disaffection, and only condemned him for not having done

his utmost. But it must be remembered that in consequence of many scandals

which had taken place in the previous war the Articles of War had been

deliberately revised so as to leave no punishment save death for the

officer of any rank who did not do his utmost against the enemy either in

battle or pursuit. That Byng had not done all he could is undeniable, and

he therefore fell under the law. Neither must it be forgotten that in the

previous war in 1745 an unhappy young lieutenant, Baker Phillips by name,

whose captain had brought his ship into action unprepared, and who, when

his superior was killed, surrendered the ship when she could no longer be

defended, was shot by sentence of a court-martial. This savage punishment

was approved by the higher officers of the navy, who showed great lenity to

men of their own rank. The contrast had angered the country, and the

Articles of War had been amended precisely in order that there might be one

law for all.

The facts of Byng's life are fairly set out in Charnock's _Biogr. Nav._

vol. iv. pp. 145 to 179. The number of contemporary pamphlets about his

case is very great, but they are of no historical value, except as

illustrating the state of public opinion.

(D. H.)

BYNKERSHOEK, CORNELIUS VAN (1673-1743), Dutch jurist, was born at

Middleburg in Zeeland. In the prosecution of his legal studies, and while

holding the offices first of member and afterwards of president of the

supreme court, he found the common law of his country so defective as to be

nearly useless for practical purposes. This abuse he resolved to reform,

and took as the basis of a new system the principles of the ancient Roman

law. His works are very voluminous. The most important of them are _De foro

legatorum_ (1702); _Observationes Juris Romani_ (1710), of which a

continuation in four books appeared in 1733; the treatise _De Dominio

Maris_ (1721); and the _Quaestiones Juris Publici_ (1737). Complete

editions of his works were published after his death; one in folio at

Geneva in 1761, and another in two volumes folio at Leiden in 1766.

BYRD, WILLIAM (1543-1623), English musical composer, was probably a member

of one of the numerous Lincolnshire families of the name who were to be

found at Lincoln, Spalding, Pinchbeck, Moulton and Epworth in the 16th

century. According to Wood, he was "bred up to musick under Thomas Tallis."

He was appointed organist of Lincoln cathedral about 1563, and on the 14th

of September 1568 was married at St Margaret in the Close to Ellen or

Julian Birley. On the 22nd of February 1569 he was sworn in as a member of

the Chapel Royal, but he does not seem to have left Lincoln immediately. In

the Chapel Royal he shared with Tallis the honorary post of organist, and

on the 22nd [v.04 p.0897] of January 1575 the two composers obtained a

licence for twenty-one years from Elizabeth to print music and music-paper,

a monopoly which does not seem to have been at all remunerative. In 1575

Byrd and Tallis published a collection of Latin motets for five and six

voices, printed by Thomas Vautrollier. In 1578 Byrd and his family were

living at Harlington, Middlesex. As early as 1581 his name occurs among

lists of recusants, and though he retained his post in the Chapel Royal he

was throughout his life a Catholic. About 1579 he set a three-part song in

Thomas Legge's Latin play _Ricardus Tertius_. In 1588 he published

_Psalmes, Sonets and Songs of Sadnes and Pietie, _and in the same year

contributed two madrigals to Nicolas Yonge's _Musica Transalpina_. In 1589

appeared _Songs of Sundrie Natures_, a second edition of which was issued

in 1610. In the same year he published _Liber Primus Sacrarum Cantionum_, a

second series of which was brought out in 1591. In 1590 two madrigals by

Byrd were included in Thomas Watson's _First Sett of Italian Madrigalls

Englished_; one of these seems to have been sung before Queen Elizabeth on

her visit to Lord Hertford at Elvetham in 1591. In April 1592 Byrd was

still living at Harlington, but about 1593 he became possessed of the

remainder of a lease of Stondon Place, Essex, a farm of some 200 acres,

belonging to William Shelley, who was shortly afterwards convicted of high

treason. The property was sequestrated, and on the 15th of July 1595 Byrd

obtained a crown lease of it for the lives of his eldest son Christopher

and his daughters Elizabeth and Rachel. On the death of Shelley his son

bought back his estates (in 1604), whereupon his widow attempted to oust

Byrd from Stondon Place, on the ground that it formed part of her jointure.

Byrd was upheld in his possession of the property by James I. (_Calendar of

State Papers, Dom. Series_, James I. add. series, vol. xxxvi.), but Mrs

Shelley persevered in her suit, apparently until her death in 1609. In the

following year the matter was settled for a time by Byrd's buying Stondon

Place in the names of John and Thomas Petre, part of the property being

charged with a payment to Byrd of £20 for his life, with remainder to his

second son Thomas. Throughout this long suit Byrd, though in possession of

property which had been confiscated from a recusant and actually taking

part as a member of the Chapel Royal at the coronation of James I., had

been excommunicated since 1598, while from 1605 until 1612, and possibly

later, he was regularly presented before the archidiaconal court of Essex

as a Catholic. In 1603 Easte published a work (no copies of which are known

to exist) entitled _Medulla Musicke. Sucked out of the sappe of two_ [_of_]

_the most famous Musitians that ever were in this land, namely Master

Wylliam Byrd ... and Master Alphonso Ferabosco ... either of whom having

made 40tie severall waies (without contention), showing most rare and

intricate skill in 2 partes in one upon the playne song Miserere_. In 1607

appeared two books of _Gradualia_, a second edition of which was issued in

1610. In the following year he published _Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets; some

solemne, others joyfull, framed to the life of the Words_. Probably in the

same year was issued _Parthenia_, a collection of virginal music, in which

Byrd was associated with Bull and Orlando Gibbons. The last work to which

he contributed was Sir Thomas Leighton's _Teares or Lamentations of a

Sorrowfull Soule_ (1614). His death took place on the 4th of July 1623. It

is recorded in the _Cheque Book_ of the Chapel Royal as that of a "father

of musicke." His will, dated the 15th of November 1622, shows that he

remained a Catholic until the end of his life, and he expresses a desire

that he may die at Stondon and be buried near his wife. From the same

document it seems that his latter years had been embittered by a dispute

with his eldest son, but that the matter was settled by an agreement with

his daughter-in-law Catherine, to whom he left his property at Stondon,

charged with the payment of £20 to his second son Thomas and £10 to his

daughter Rachel, with remainder to his grandson Thomas and his second son

of the same name. In 1635 the estate again came before the court of

chancery, on the ground that the annuities had not been paid. The property

seems about 1637 to have been let to one John Leigh, and in 1651 was held

by a member of the Petre family. The committee for compounding with

delinquents at that date allowed Thomas Byrd the annuity of £20 bequeathed

by his father. Byrd's arms, as entered in the Visitation of Essex of 1634

_ex sigillo_ were three stags' heads cabossed, a canton ermine. His

children were (1) Christopher, who married Catherine, daughter of Thomas

Moore of Bamborough, and had a son, Thomas, living at Stondon in 1634; (2)

Thomas; (3) Elizabeth, who married successively John Jackson and--Burdett;

(4) Rachel, married (1)--Hook, by whom she had two children, William and

Catherine, married to Michael Walton; in 1634 Rachel Hook had married (2)

Edward Biggs; (5) Mary, married (1) Henry Hawksworth, by whom she had four

sons, William, Henry, George and John; (2) Thomas Falconbridge. Anne Byrd,

who is mentioned in the proceedings _Shelley_ v. _Byrd_ (_Exchequer

Decrees_, 7 James I., series ii. vol. vii. fol. 294 and 328), was probably

a fourth daughter who died young.

Besides the works already mentioned Byrd was the composer of three masses,

for three, four and five voices respectively, which seem to have been

published with some privacy about 1588. There exists a second edition (also

undated) of the four-part mass; all three have recently appeared in modern

editions, and increase Byrd's claim to rank as the greatest English

composer of his age. In addition to his published works, a large amount

still remains in MS., comprising nearly every kind of composition. The

Fitzwilliam _Virginal Book_ contains a long series of interesting pieces

for the virginal, and more still remains unpublished in Lady Neville's

_Virginal Book_ and other contemporary collections. His industry was

enormous, and though his work is unequal and the licences he allowed can

hardly be defended on strict grounds, his Latin church music and his

instrumental compositions entitle him to high rank among his

contemporaries. As a madrigalist he was inferior to Morley, Wilbye and

Gibbons, though even in this branch of his art he often displays great

charm and individuality.

(W. B. S.*)

BYROM, JOHN (1692-1763), English poet, writer of hymns and inventor of a

system of shorthand, was born at Kersal Cell, near Manchester, on the 29th

of February 1692, the younger son of a prosperous merchant. He was educated

at Merchant Taylors school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he

became a fellow in 1714. His first poem, "Colin to Phoebe," a pastoral,

appeared in the _Spectator_, No. 603. The heroine is said to have been Dr

Bentley's daughter, Joanna, the mother of Richard Cumberland, the

dramatist. After leaving the university Byrom went abroad, ostensibly to

study medicine, but he never practised and possibly his errand was really

political, for he was an adherent of the Pretender. He was elected a member

of the Royal Society in 1724. On his return to London he married his cousin

in 1721, and to support himself taught a new method of shorthand of his own

invention, till he succeeded (1740) to his father's estate on the death of

his elder brother. His diary gives interesting portraits and letters of the

many great men of his time whom he knew intimately. He died on the 26th of

September 1763. A collection of his poems was published in 1773, and he is

included in Alexander Chalmers's _English Poets_. His system of shorthand

was not published until after his death, when it was printed as _The

Universal English Shorthand; or the way of writing English in the most

easy, concise, regular and beautiful manner, applicable to any other

language, but particularly adjusted to our own_ (Manchester, 1767).

The _Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom, related by Richard

Parkinson, D.D._, was published by the Chetham Society (1854-1857).

BYRON, GEORGE GORDON BYRON, 6TH BARON (1788-1824), English poet, was born

in London at 16 Holles Street, Cavendish Square, on the 22nd of January

1788. The Byrons were of Norman stock, but the founder of the family was

Sir John Byron, who entered into possession of the priory and lands of

Newstead in the county of Nottingham in 1540. From him it descended (but

with a bar-sinister) to a great-grandson, John (1st Baron) Byron (_q.v._),

a Cavalier general, who was raised to the peerage in 1643. The first Lord

Byron died childless, and was succeeded by his brother Richard, the

great-grandfather of William, the 5th lord, who outlived son and grandson,

and was [v.04 p.0898] succeeded by his great-nephew, the poet. Admiral the

Hon. John Byron (_q.v._) was the poet's grandfather. His eldest son,

Captain John Byron, the poet's father, was a libertine by choice and in an

eminent degree. He caused to be divorced, and married (1779) as his first

wife, the marchioness of Carmarthen (born Amelia D'Arcy), Baroness Conyers

in her own right. One child of the marriage survived, the Hon. Augusta

Byron (1783-1851), the poet's half-sister, who, in 1807, married her first

cousin, Colonel George Leigh. His second marriage to Catherine Gordon (b.

1765) of Gight in Aberdeenshire took place at Bath on the 13th of May 1785.

He is said to have squandered the fortunes of both wives. It is certain

that Gight was sold to pay his debts (1786), and that the sole provision

for his wife was a settlement of £3000. It was an unhappy marriage. There

was an attempt at living together in France, and, when this failed, Mrs

Byron returned to Scotland. On her way thither she gave birth to a son,

christened George Gordon after his maternal grandfather, who was descended

from Sir William Gordon of Gight, grandson of James I. of Scotland. After a

while her husband rejoined her, but went back to France and died at

Valenciennes on the 2nd of August 1791. His wife was not a bad woman, but

she was not a good mother. Vain and capricious, passionate and

self-indulgent, she mismanaged her son from his infancy, now provoking him

by her foolish fondness, and now exciting his contempt by her paroxysms of

impotent rage. She neither looked nor spoke like a gentlewoman; but in the

conduct of her affairs she was praiseworthy. She hated and avoided debt,

and when relief came (a civil list pension of £300 a year) she spent most

of it upon her son. Fairly well educated, she was not without a taste for

books, and her letters are sensible and to the point. But the violence of

her temper was abnormal. Her father committed suicide, and it is possible

that she inherited a tendency to mental derangement. If Byron owed anything

to his parents it was a plea for pardon.

The poet's first years were spent in lodgings at Aberdeen. From 1794 to

1798 he attended the grammar school, "threading all classes" till he

reached the fourth. It was a good beginning, a solid foundation, enabling

him from the first to keep a hand over his talents and to turn them to a

set purpose. He was lame from his birth. His right leg and foot, possibly

both feet, were contracted by infantile paralysis, and, to strengthen his

muscles, his mother sent him in the summers of 1796, 1797 to a farm house

on Deeside. He walked with difficulty, but he wandered at will, soothed and

inspired by the grandeur of the scenery. To his Scottish upbringing he owed

his love of mountains, his love and knowledge of the Bible, and too much

Calvinism for faith or unfaith in Christianity. The death of his

great-uncle (May 19, 1798) placed him in possession of the title and

estates. Early in the autumn Mrs Byron travelled south with her son and his

nurse, and for a time made her home at Newstead Abbey. Byron was old enough

to know what had befallen him. "It was a change from a shabby Scotch flat

to a palace," a half-ruined palace, indeed, but his very own. It was a

proud moment, but in a few weeks he was once more in lodgings. The shrunken

leg did not improve, and acting on bad advice his mother entrusted him to

the care of a quack named Lavender, truss-maker to the general hospital at

Nottingham. His nurse who was in charge of him maltreated him, and the

quack tortured him to no purpose. At his own request he read Virgil and

Cicero with a tutor.

In August 1799 he was sent to a preparatory school at Dulwich. The master,

Dr Glennie, perceived that the boy liked reading for its own sake and gave

him the free run of his library. He read a set of the _British Poets_ from

beginning to end more than once. This, too, was an initiation and a

preparation. He remained at Dulwich till April 1801, when, on his mother's

intervention, he was sent to Harrow. His school days, 1801-1805, were

fruitful in two respects. He learned enough Latin and Greek to make him a

classic, if not a classical scholar, and he made friends with his equals

and superiors. He learned something of his own worth and of the worth of

others. "My school-friendships," he says, "were with me passions." Two of

his closest friends died young, and from Lord Clare, whom he loved best of

all, he was separated by chance and circumstance. He was an odd mixture,

now lying dreaming on his favourite tombstone in the churchyard, now the

ring-leader in whatever mischief was afoot. He was a "record" swimmer, and,

in spite of his lameness, enough of a cricketer to play for his school at

Lord's, and yet he found time to read and master standard works of history

and biography, and to acquire more general knowledge than boys and masters

put together.

In the midsummer of 1803, when he was in his sixteenth year, he fell in

love, once for all, with his distant relative, Mary Anne Chaworth, a "minor

heiress" of the hall and park of Annesley which marches with Newstead. Two

years his senior, she was already engaged to a neighbouring squire. There

were meetings half-way between Newstead and Annesley, of which she thought

little and he only too much. What was sport to the girl was death to the

boy, and when at length he realized the "hopelessness of his attachment,"

he was "thrown out," as he said, "alone, on a wide, wide sea." She is the

subject of at least five of his early poems, including the pathetic

stanzas, "Hills of Annesley," and there are allusions to his love story in

_Childe Harold_ (c. i _s.v._), and in "The Dream" (1816).

Byron went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1805.

Cambridge did him no good. "The place is the devil," he said, and according

to his own showing he did homage to the _genius loci_. But whatever he did

or failed to do, he made friends who were worthy of his choice. Among them

were the scholar-dandy Scrope Berdmore Davies, Francis Hodgson, who died

provost of Eton, and, best friend of all, John Cam Hobhouse (afterwards

Lord Broughton). And there was another friend, a chorister named Edleston,

a "humble youth" for whom he formed a romantic attachment. He died whilst

Byron was still abroad (May 1811), but not unwept nor unsung, if, as there

is little doubt, the mysterious Thyrza poems of 1811, 1812 refer to his

death. During the vacation of 1806, and in 1807 which was one "long

vacation," he took to his pen, and wrote, printed and published most of his

"Juvenile Poems." His first venture was a thin quarto of sixty-six pages,

printed by S. and J. Ridge of Newark. The "advertisement" is dated the 23rd

of December 1806, but before that date he had begun to prepare a second

collection for the press. One poem ("To Mary") contained at least one

stanza which was frankly indecent, and yielding to advice he gave orders

that the entire issue should be thrown into the fire. Early in January 1807

an expurgated collection entitled _Poems on Various Occasions_ was ready

for private distribution. Encouraged by two critics, Henry Mackenzie and

Lord Woodhouselee, he determined to recast this second issue and publish it

under his own name. _Hours of Idleness_, "by George Gordon Lord Byron, a

minor," was published in June 1807. The fourth and last issue of

_Juvenilia_, entitled _Poems, Original and Translated_, was published in

March 1808.

_Hours of Idleness_ enjoyed a brief triumph. The _Critical_ and other

reviews were "very indulgent," but the _Edinburgh Review_ for January 1808

contained an article, not, as Byron believed, by Jeffrey, but by Brougham,

which put, or tried to put, the author and "his poesy" to open shame. The

sole result was that it supplied fresh material and a new title for some

rhyming couplets on "British Bards" which he had begun to write. A satire

on Jeffrey, the editor, and Lord Holland, the patron of the _Edinburgh

Review_, was slipped into the middle of "British Bards," and the poem

rechristened _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ (published the 1st of

March 1809).

In April 1808, whilst he was still "a minor," Byron entered upon his

inheritance. Hitherto the less ruinous portions of the abbey had been

occupied by a tenant, Lord Grey de Ruthven. The banqueting hall, the grand

drawing-room, and other parts of the monastic building were uninhabitable,

but by incurring fresh debts, two sets of apartments were refurnished for

Byron and for his mother. Dismantled and ruinous, it was still a splendid

inheritance. In line with the front of the abbey is the west front of the

priory church, with its hollow arch, once a "mighty window," its vacant

niches, its delicate Gothic mouldings. The abbey buildings enclose a grassy

quadrangle [v.04 p.0899] overlooked by two-storeyed cloisters. On the

eastern side are the state apartments occupied by kings and queens not as

guests, but by feudal right. In the park, which is part of Sherwood Forest,

there is a chain of lakes--the largest, the north-west, Byron's "lucid

lake." A waterfall or "cascade" issues from the lake, in full view of the

room where Byron slept. The possession of this lordly and historic domain

was an inspiration in itself. It was an ideal home for one who was to be

hailed as the spirit or genius of romance.

On the 13th of March 1809, he took his seat in the House of Lords. He had

determined, as soon as he was of age, to travel in the East, but before he

sought "another zone" he invited Hobhouse and three others to a

house-warming. One of the party, C.S. Matthews, describes a day at

Newstead. Host and guests lay in bed till one. "The afternoon was passed in

various diversions, fencing, single-stick ... riding, cricket, sailing on

the lake." They dined at eight, and after the cloth was removed handed

round "a human skull filled with Burgundy." After dinner they "buffooned

about the house" in a set of monkish dresses. They went to bed some time

between one and three in the morning. Moore thinks that the picture of

these festivities is "pregnant in character," and argues that there were

limits to the misbehaviour of the "wassailers." The story, as told in

_Childe Harold_ (c. I. s. v.-ix.), need not be taken too seriously. Byron

was angry because Lord De La Warr did not wish him goodbye, and visited his

displeasure on friends and "lemans" alike. May and June were devoted to the

preparation of an enlarged edition of his satire. At length, accompanied by

Hobhouse and a small staff of retainers, he set out on his travels. He

sailed from Falmouth on the 2nd of July and reached Lisbon on the 7th of

July 1809. The first two cantos of _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ contain a

record of the principal events of his first year of absence.

The first canto describes Lisbon, Cintra, the ride through Portugal and

Spain to Seville and thence to Cadiz. He is moved by the grandeur of the

scenery, but laments the helplessness of the people and their impending

fate. Talavera was fought and won whilst he was in Spain, but he is

convinced that the "Scourge of the World" will prevail, and that Britain,

"the fond ally," will display her blundering heroism in vain. Being against

the government, he is against the war. History has falsified his politics,

but his descriptions of places and scenes, of "Morena's dusky height," of

Cadiz and the bull-fight, retain their freshness and their warmth.

Byron sailed from Gibraltar on the 16th of August, and spent a month at

Malta making love to Mrs Spencer Smith (the "Fair Florence" of c. II. s.

xxix.-xxxiii.). He anchored off Prevesa on the 28th of September. The

second canto records a journey on horseback through Albania, then almost a

_terra incognita_, as far as Tepeleni, where he was entertained by Ali

Pacha (October 20th), a yachting tour along the shores of the Ambracian

Gulf (November 8-23), a journey by land from Larnaki to Athens (December

15-25), and excursions in Attica, Sunium and Marathon (January 13-25,

1810).

Of the tour in Asia Minor, a visit to Ephesus (March 15, 1810), an

excursion in the Troad (April 13), and the famous swim across the

Hellespont (May 3), the record is to be sought elsewhere. The stanzas on

Constantinople (lxxvii.-lxxxii.), where Byron and Hobhouse stayed for two

months, though written at the time and on the spot, were not included in

the poem till 1814. They are, probably, part of a projected third canto. On

the 14th of July Hobhouse set sail for England and Byron returned to

Athens.

Of Byron's second year of residence in the East little is known beyond the

bare facts that he was travelling in the Morea during August and September,

that early in October he was at Patras, having just recovered from a severe

attack of malarial fever, and that by the 14th of November he had returned

to Athens and taken up his quarters at the Franciscan convent. Of his

movements during the next five months there is no record, but of his

studies and pursuits there is substantial evidence. He learnt Romaic, he

compiled the notes to the second canto of _Childe Harold_. He wrote (March

12) _Hints from Horace_ (published 1831), an imitation or loose translation

of the _Epistola ad Pisones_ (Art of Poetry), and (March 17) _The Curse of

Minerva_ (published 1815), a skit on Lord Elgin's deportation of the

metopes and frieze of the Parthenon.

He left Athens in April, passed some weeks at Malta, and landed at

Portsmouth (c. July 20). Arrived in London his first step was to consult

his literary adviser, R.C. Dallas, with regard to the publication of _Hints

from Horace_. Of _Childe Harold_ he said nothing, but after some hesitation

produced the MS. from a "small trunk," and, presenting him with the

copyright, commissioned Dallas to offer it to a publisher. Rejected by

Miller of Albemarle Street, who published for Lord Elgin, it was finally

accepted by Murray of Fleet Street, who undertook to share the profits of

an edition with Dallas.

Meanwhile Mrs Byron died suddenly from a stroke of apoplexy. Byron set off

at once for Newstead, but did not find his mother alive. He had but little

affection for her while she lived, but her death touched him to the quick.

"I had but one friend," he exclaimed, "and she is gone." Another loss

awaited him. Whilst his mother lay dead in his house, he heard that his

friend Matthews had been drowned in the Cam. Edleston and Wingfield had

died in May, but the news had reached him on landing. There were troubles

on every side. On the 11th of October he wrote the "Epistle to a Friend"

("Oh, banish care," &c.) and the lines "To Thyrza," which, with other

elegies, were appended to the second edition of _Childe Harold_ (April 17,

1812). It was this cry of desolation, this open profession of melancholy,

which at first excited the interest of contemporaries, and has since been

decried as morbid and unreal. No one who has read his letters can doubt the

sincerity of his grief, but it is no less true that he measured and

appraised its literary significance. He could and did turn it to account.

Towards the close of the year he made friends with Moore. Some lines in

_English Bards_, &c. (ii. 466-467), taunting Moore with fighting a duel

with Jeffrey with "leadless pistol" had led to a challenge, and it was not

till Byron returned to England that explanations ensued, and that the

challenge was withdrawn. As a poet Byron outgrew Moore, giving back more

than he had received, but the friendship which sprang up between them still

serves Byron in good stead. Moore's _Life of Byron_ (1830) is no doubt a

picture of the man at his best, but it is a genuine likeness. At the end of

October Byron moved to London and took up his quarters at 8 St James's

Street. On the 27th of February 1812 he made his first speech in the House

of Lords on a bill which made the wilful destruction of certain newly

invented stocking-frames a capital offence, speaking in defence of the

riotous "hands" who feared that their numbers would be diminished by

improved machinery. It was a brilliant speech and won the praise of Burdett

and Lord Holland. He made two other speeches during the same session, but

thenceforth pride or laziness kept him silent. _Childe Harold_ (4to) was

published on Tuesday, the 10th of March 1812. "The effect," says Moore,

"was ... electric, his fame ... seemed to spring, like the palace of a

fairy king, in a night." A fifth edition (8vo) was issued on the 5th of

December 1812. Just turned twenty-four he "found himself famous," a great

poet, a rising statesman. Society, which in spite of his rank had neglected

him, was now at his feet. But he could not keep what he had won. It was not

only "villainous company," as he put it, which was to prove his "spoil,"

but the opportunity for intrigue. The excitement and absorption of one

reigning passion after another destroyed his peace of mind and put him out

of conceit with himself. His first affair of any moment was with Lady

Caroline Lamb the wife of William Lamb, better known as Lord Melbourne, a

delicate, golden-haired sprite, who threw herself in his way, and

afterwards, when she was shaken off, involved him in her own disgrace. To

her succeeded Lady Oxford, who was double his own age, and Lady Frances

Wedderburn Webster, the "Ginevra" of his sonnets, the "Medora" of _The

Corsair_.

His "way of life" was inconsistent with an official career, but there was

no slackening of his poetical energies. In February 1813 he published _The

Waltz_ (anonymously), he wrote and [v.04 p.0900] published _The Giaour_

(published June 5, 1813) and _The Bride of Abydos_ (published November 29,

1813), and he wrote _The Corsair_ (published February 1, 1814). The

_Turkish Tales_ were even more popular than _Childe Harold_. Murray sold

10,000 copies of _The Corsair_ on the day of publication. Byron was at

pains to make his accessories correct. He prided himself on the accuracy of

his "costume." He was under no delusion as to the ethical or artistic value

of these experiments on "public patience."

In the summer of 1813 a new and potent influence came into his life. Mrs

Leigh, whose home was at Newmarket, came up to London on a visit. After a

long interval the brother and sister met, and whether there is or is not

any foundation for the dark story obscurely hinted at in Byron's lifetime,

and afterwards made public property by Mrs Beecher Stowe (_Macmillan's

Magazine_, 1869, pp. 377-396), there is no question as to the depth and

sincerity of his love for his "one relative,"--that her well-being was more

to him than his own. Byron passed the "seasons" of 1813, 1814 in London.

His manner of life we know from his journals. Socially he was on the crest

of the wave. He was a welcome guest at the great Whig houses, at Lady

Melbourne's, at Lady Jersey's, at Holland House. Sheridan and Moore, Rogers

and Campbell, were his intimates and companions. He was a member of the

Alfred, of Watier's, of the Cocoa Tree, and half a dozen clubs besides.

After the publication of _The Corsair_ he had promised an interval of

silence, but the abdication of Napoleon evoked "An Ode," &c., in his

dishonour (April 16); _Lara, a Tale_, an informal sequel to _The Corsair_,

was published anonymously on August 6, 1814.

Newstead had been put up for sale, but pending the completion of the

contract was still in his possession. During his last visit but one, whilst

his sister was his guest, he became engaged to Miss Anna Isabella Milbanke

(b. May 17, 1792; d. May 16, 1860), the only daughter of Sir Ralph

Milbanke, Bart., and the Hon. Judith (born Noel), daughter of Lord

Wentworth. She was an heiress, and in succession to a peerage in her own

right (becoming Baroness Wentworth in 1856). She was a pretty girl of "a

perfect figure," highly educated, a mathematician, and, by courtesy, a

poetess. She had rejected Byron's first offer, but, believing that her

cruelty had broken his heart and that he was an altered man, she was now

determined on marriage. High-principled, but self-willed and opinionated,

she believed that she held her future in her own hands. On her side there

was ambition touched with fancy--on his, a wish to be married and some hope

perhaps of finding an escape from himself. The marriage took place at

Seaham in Durham on the 2nd of January 1815. Bride and bridegroom spent

three months in paying visits, and at the end of March settled at 13

Piccadilly Terrace, London.

Byron was a member of the committee of management of Drury Lane theatre,

and devoted much of his time to his professional duties. He wrote but

little poetry. _Hebrew Melodies_ (published April 1815), begun at Seaham in

October 1814, were finished and given to the musical composer, Isaac

Nathan, for publication. _The Siege of Corinth_ and _Parisina_ (published

February 7, 1816) were got ready for the press. On the 10th of December

Lady Byron gave birth to a daughter christened Augusta Ada. To judge from

his letters, for the first weeks or months of his marriage things went

smoothly. His wife's impression was that Byron "had avowedly begun his

revenge from the first." It is certain that before the child was born his

conduct was so harsh, so violent, and so eccentric, that she believed, or

tried to persuade herself, that he was mad.

On the 15th of January 1816 Lady Byron left London for her father's house,

claimed his protection, and after some hesitation and consultation with her

legal advisers demanded a separation from her husband. It is a matter of

common knowledge that in 1869 Mrs Beecher Stowe affirmed that Lady Byron

expressly told her that Byron was guilty of incest with his half-sister,

Mrs Leigh; also that in 1905 the second Lord Lovelace (Lord Byron's

grandson) printed a work entitled _Astarte_ which was designed to uphold

and to prove the truth of this charge. It is a fact that neither Lady Byron

nor her advisers supported their demand by this or any other charge of

misconduct, but it is also a fact that Lord Byron yielded to the demand

reluctantly, under pressure and for large pecuniary considerations. It is a

fact that Lady Byron's letters to Mrs Leigh before and after the separation

are inconsistent with a knowledge or suspicion of guilt on the part of her

sister-in-law, but it is also a fact (see _Astarte_, pp. 142-145) that she

signed a document (dated March 14, 1816) to the effect that any renewal of

intercourse did not involve and must not be construed as a withdrawal of

the charge. It cannot be doubted that Lady Byron's conviction that her

husband's relations with his half-sister before his marriage had been of an

immoral character was a factor in her demand for a separation, but whether

there were other and what issues, and whether Lady Byron's conviction was

founded on fact, are questions which have not been finally answered. Lady

Byron's charge, as reported by Mrs Beecher Stowe and upheld by the 2nd earl

of Lovelace, is "non-proven." Mr Robert Edgcome, in _Byron: the Last Phase_

(1909), insists that Mary Chaworth was the real object of Byron's passion,

and that Mrs Leigh was only shielding her.

The separation of Lord and Lady Byron was the talk of the town. Two poems

entitled "Fare Thee Well" and "A Sketch," which Byron had written and

printed for private circulation, were published by _The Champion_ on

Sunday, April 14. The other London papers one by one followed suit. The

poems, more especially "A Sketch," were provocative of criticism. There was

a balance of opinion, but politics turned the scale. Byron had recently

published some pro-Gallican stanzas, "On the 'Star of the Legion of

Honour,'" in the _Examiner_ (April 7), and it was felt by many that private

dishonour was the outcome of public disloyalty. The Whigs defended Byron as

best they could, but his own world, with one or two exceptions, ostracized

him. The "excommunicating voice of society," as Moore put it, was loud and

insistent. The articles of separation were signed on or about the 18th of

April, and on Sunday, the 25th of April, Byron sailed from Dover for

Ostend. The "Lines on Churchill's Grave" were written whilst he was waiting

for a favourable wind. His route lay through the Low Countries, and by the

Rhine to Switzerland. On his way he halted at Brussels and visited the

field of Waterloo. He reached Geneva on the 25th of May, where he met by

appointment at Dejean's Hôtel d'Angleterre, Shelley, Mary Godwin and Clare

(or "Claire") Clairmont. The meeting was probably at the instance of

Claire, who had recently become, and aspired to remain, Byron's mistress.

On the 10th of June Byron moved to the Villa Diodati on the southern shore

of the lake. Shelley and his party had already settled at an adjoining

villa, the Campagne Montalègre. The friends were constantly together. On

the 23rd of June Byron and Shelley started for a yachting tour round the

lake. They visited the castle of Chillon on the 26th of June, and, being

detained by weather at the Hôtel de l'Ancre, Ouchy, Byron finished (June

27-29) the third canto of _Childe Harold_ (published November 18), and

began the _Prisoner of Chillon_ (published December 5, 1816). These and

other poems of July-September 1816, _e.g._ "The Dream" and the first two

acts of _Manfred_ (published June 16, 1817), betray the influence of

Shelley, and through him of Wordsworth, both in thought and style. Byron

knew that Wordsworth had power, but was against his theories, and resented

his criticism of Pope and Dryden. Shelley was a believer and a disciple,

and converted Byron to the Wordsworthian creed. Moreover he was an

inspiration in himself. Intimacy with Shelley left Byron a greater poet

than he was before. Byron passed the summer at the Villa Diodati, where he

also wrote the _Monody on the Death of Sheridan_, published September 9,

1816. The second half of September was spent and devoted to "an excursion

in the mountains." His journal (September 18-29), which was written for and

sent to Mrs Leigh, is a great prose poem, the source of the word pictures

of Alpine scenery in _Manfred_. His old friend Hobhouse was with him and he

enjoyed himself, but at the close he confesses that he could not lose his

"own wretched identity" in the "majesty and the power and the glory" of

nature. Remorse was scotched, not [v.04 p.0901] killed. On the 6th of

October Byron and Hobhouse started via Milan and Verona for Venice, which

was reached early in November. For the next three years Byron lived in or

near Venice--at first, 1816-1817, in apartments in the Frezzeria, and after

January 1818 in the central block of the Mocenigo palace. Venice appealed

both to his higher and his lower nature. He set himself to study her

history, to understand her constitution, to learn her language. The sights

and scenes with which Shakespeare and Otway, Schiller's _Ghostseer_, and

Madame de Staël's _Corinne_ had made him familiar, were before his eyes,

not dreams but realities. He would "repeople" her with her own past, and

"stamp her image" on the creations of his pen. But he had no one to live

for but himself, and that self he gave over to a reprobate mind. He planned

and pursued a life of deliberate profligacy. Of two of his amours we learn

enough or too much from his letters to Murray and to Moore--the first with

his landlord's wife, Marianna Segati, the second with Margarita Cogni (the

"Fornarina"), a Venetian of the lower class, who amused him with her

savagery and her wit. But, if Shelley may be trusted, there was a limit to

his candour. There is abundant humour, but there is an economy of detail in

his pornographic chronicle. He could not touch pitch without being defiled.

But to do him justice he was never idle. He kept his brains at work, and

for this reason, perhaps, he seems for a time to have recovered his spirits

and sinned with a good courage. His song of carnival, "So we'll go no more

a-roving," is a hymn of triumph. About the middle of April he set out for

Rome. His first halt was at Ferrara, which inspired the "Lament of Tasso"

(published July 17, 1817). He passed through Florence, where he saw "_the_

Venus" (of Medici) in the Uffizi Gallery, by reedy Thrasymene and Term's

"matchless cataract" to "Rome the Wonderful." At Rome, with Hobhouse as

companion and guide, he stayed three weeks. He returned to Venice on the

28th of May, but shortly removed to a villa at Mira on the Brenta, some 7

m. inland. A month later (June 26) when memory had selected and reduced to

order the first impressions of his tour, he began to work them up into a

fourth canto of _Childe Harold_. A first draft of 126 stanzas was finished

by the 29th of July; the 60 additional stanzas which made up the canto as

it stands were written up to material suggested by or supplied by Hobhouse,

"who put his researches" at Byron's disposal and wrote the learned and

elaborate notes which are appended to the poem. Among the books which

Murray sent out to Venice was a copy of Hookham Frere's _Whistlecraft_.

Byron took the hint and produced _Beppo, a Venetian Story_ (published

anonymously on the 28th of February 1818). He attributes his choice of the

mock heroic _ottava-rima_ to Frere's example, but he was certainly familiar

with Casti's _Novelle_, and, according to Stendhal, with the poetry of

Buratti. The success of _Beppo_ and a growing sense that "the excellent

manner of _Whistlecraft_" was the manner for him, led him to study Frere's

masters and models, Berni and Pulci. An accident had led to a great

discovery.

The fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ was published on the 28th of April

1818. Nearly three months went by before Murray wrote to him, and he began

to think that his new poem was a failure. Meanwhile he completed an "Ode on

Venice," in which he laments her apathy and decay, and contrasts the

tyranny of the Old World with the new birth of freedom in America. In

September he began _Don Juan_. His own account of the inception of his last

and greatest work is characteristic but misleading. He says (September 9)

that his new poem is to be in the style of _Beppo_, and is "meant to be a

little quietly facetious about everything." A year later (August 12, 1819),

he says that he neither has nor had a _plan_--but that "he had or has

_materials_." By materials he means books, such as Dalzell's _Shipwrecks

and Disasters by Sea_, or de Castelnau's _Histoire de la nouvelle Russie_,

&c., which might be regarded as poetry in the rough. The dedication to

Robert Southey (not published till 1833) is a prologue to the play. The

"Lakers" had given samples of their poetry, their politics and their

morals, and now it was his turn to speak and to speak out. He too would

write "An Excursion." He doubted that _Don Juan_ might be "too free for

these modest days." It _was_ too free for the public, for his publisher,

even for his mistress; and the "building up of the drama," as Shelley puts

it, was a slow and gradual process. Cantos I., II. were published (4to) on

the 15th of July 1819; Cantos III., IV., V., finished in November 1820,

were not published till the 8th of August 1821. Cantos VI.-XVI., written

between June 1822 and March 1823, were published at intervals between the

15th of July 1823 and the 26th of March 1824. Canto XVII. was begun in May

1823, but was never finished. A fragment of fourteen stanzas, found in his

room at Missolonghi, was first published in 1903.

He did not put all his materials into _Don Juan_. "Mazeppa, a tale of the

Russian Ukraine," based on a passage in Voltaire's _Charles XII._, was

finished by the 30th of September 1818 and published with "An Ode" (on

Venice) on the 28th of June 1819. In the spring of 1819 Byron met in

Venice, and formed a connexion with, an Italian lady of rank, Teresa (born

Gamba), wife of the Cavaliere Guiccioli. She was young and beautiful,

well-read and accomplished. Married at sixteen to a man nearly four times

her age, she fell in love with Byron at first sight, soon became and for

nearly four years remained his mistress. A good and true wife to him in all

but name, she won from Byron ample devotion and a prolonged constancy. Her

volume of _Recollections_ (_Lord Byron jugé par les témoins de sa vie_,

1869), taken for what it is worth, is testimony in Byron's favour. The

countess left Venice for Ravenna at the end of April; within a month she

sent for Byron, and on the 10th of June he arrived at Ravenna and took

rooms in the Strada di Porto Sisi. The house (now No. 295) is close to

Dante's tomb, and to gratify the countess and pass the time he wrote the

"Prophecy of Dante" (published April 21, 1821). According to the preface

the poem was a metrical experiment, an exercise in _terza rima_; but it had

a deeper significance. It was "intended for the Italians." Its purport was

revolutionary. In the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_, already translated

into Italian, he had attacked the powers, and "Albion most of all" for her

betrayal of Venice, and knowing that his word had weight he appeals to the

country of his adoption to strike a blow for freedom--to "unite." It is

difficult to realize the force or extent of Byron's influence on

continental opinion. His own countrymen admired his poetry, but abhorred

and laughed at his politics. Abroad he was the prophet and champion of

liberty. His hatred of tyranny--his defence of the oppressed--was a word

spoken in season when there were few to speak but many to listen. It

brought consolation and encouragement, and it was not spoken in vain. It

must, however, be borne in mind that Byron was more of a king-hater than a

people-lover. He was against the oppressors, but he disliked and despised

the oppressed. He was aristocrat by conviction as well as birth, and if he

espoused a popular cause it was _de haut en bas_. His connexion with the

Gambas brought him into touch with the revolutionary movement, and

thenceforth he was under the espionage of the Austrian embassy at Rome. He

was suspected and "shadowed," but he was left alone.

Early in September Byron returned to La Mira, bringing the countess with

him. A month later he was surprised by a visit from Moore, who was on his

way to Rome. Byron installed Moore in the Mocenigo palace and visited him

daily. Before the final parting (October 11) Byron placed in Moore's hands

the MS. of his _Life and Adventures_ brought down to the close of 1816.

Moore, as Byron suggested, pledged the MS. to Murray for 2000 guineas, to

be Moore's property if redeemed in Byron's lifetime, but if not, to be

forfeit to Murray at Byron's death. On the 17th of May 1824, with Murray's

assent and goodwill, the MS. was burned in the drawing-room of 50 Albemarle

Street. Neither Murray nor Moore lost their money. The Longmans lent Moore

a sufficient sum to repay Murray, and were themselves repaid out of the

receipts of Moore's _Life of Byron_. Byron told Moore that the memoranda

were not "confessions," that they were "the truth but not the whole truth."

This, no doubt, was the truth, and the whole truth. Whatever they may or

may [v.04 p.0902] not have contained, they did not explain the cause or

causes of the separation from his wife.[1]

At the close of 1819 Byron finally left Venice and settled at Ravenna in

his own apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli. His relations with the

countess were put on a regular footing, and he was received in society as

her _cavaliere servente_. At Ravenna his literary activity was greater than

ever. His translation of the first canto of Pulci's _Morgante Maggiore_

(published in the _Liberal_, No. IV., July 30, 1832), a laborious and

scholarly achievement, was the work of the first two months of the year.

From April to July he was at work on the composition of _Marino Faliero,

Doge of Venice_, a tragedy in five acts (published April 21, 1821). The

plot turns on an episode in Venetian history known as _La Congiura_, the

alliance between the doge and the populace to overthrow the state. Byron

spared no pains in preparing his materials. In so far as he is

unhistorical, he errs in company with Sanudo and early Venetian chronicles.

Moved by the example of Alfieri he strove to reform the British drama by "a

severer approach to the rules." He would read his countrymen a "moral

lesson" on the dramatic propriety of observing the three unities. It was an

heroic attempt to reassert classical ideals in a romantic age, but it was

"a week too late"; Byron's "regular dramas" are admirably conceived and

finely worded, but they are cold and lifeless.

Eighteen additional sheets of the _Memoirs_ and a fifth canto of _Don Juan_

were the pastime of the autumn, and in January 1821 Byron began to work on

his second "historical drama," _Sardanapalus_. But politics intervened, and

little progress was made. He had been elected _capo_ of the "_Americani_,"

a branch of the Carbonari, and his time was taken up with buying and

storing arms and ammunition, and consultations with leading conspirators.

"The poetry of politics" and poetry on paper did not go together. Meanwhile

he would try his hand on prose. A controversy had arisen between Bowles and

Campbell with regard to the merits of Pope. Byron rushed into the fray. To

avenge and exalt Pope, to decry the "Lakers," and to lay down his own

canons of art, Byron addressed two letters to **** ****** (_i.e._ John

Murray), entitled "Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope." The first

was published in 1821, the second in 1835.

The revolution in Italy came to nothing, and by the 28th of May, Byron had

finished his work on _Sardanapalus_. The _Two Foscari_, a third historical

drama, was begun on the 12th of June and finished on the 9th of July. On

the same day he began _Cain, a Mystery_. _Cain_ was an attempt to dramatize

the Old Testament; Lucifer's apology for himself and his arraignment of the

Creator startled and shocked the orthodox. Theologically the offence lay in

its detachment. _Cain_ was not irreverent or blasphemous, but it treated

accepted dogmas as open questions. _Cain_ was published in the same volume

with the _Two Foscari_ and _Sardanapalus_, December 19, 1821. The "Blues,"

a skit upon literary coteries and their patronesses, was written in August.

It was first published in _The Liberal_, No. III., April 26, 1823, When

_Cain_ was finished Byron turned from grave to gay, from serious to

humorous theology. Southey had thought fit to eulogize George III. in

hexameter verse. He called his funeral ode a "Vision of Judgment." In the

preface there was an obvious reference to Byron. The "Satanic School" of

poetry was attributed to "men of diseased hearts and depraved

imaginations." Byron's revenge was complete. In his "Vision of Judgment"

(published in _The Liberal_, No. I., October 15, 1822) the tables are

turned. The laureate is brought before the hosts of heaven and rejected by

devils and angels alike. In October Byron wrote _Heaven and Earth, a

Mystery_ (_The Liberal_, No. II., January 1, 1823), a lyrical drama based

on the legend of the "Watchers," or fallen angels of the Book of Enoch. The

countess and her family had been expelled from Ravenna in July, but Byron

still lingered on in his apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli. At length

(October 28) he set out for Pisa. On the road he met his old friend, Lord

Clare, and spent a few minutes in his company. Rogers, whom he met at

Bologna, was his fellow-traveller as far as Florence. At Pisa he rejoined

the countess, who had taken on his behalf the Villa Lanfranchi on the Arno.

At Ravenna Byron had lived amongst Italians. At Pisa he was surrounded by a

knot of his own countrymen, friends and acquaintances of the Shelleys.

Among them were E.J. Trelawny, Thomas Medwin, author of the well-known

_Conversations of Lord Byron_ (1824), and Edward Elliker Williams. His

first work at Pisa was to dramatize Miss Lee's _Kruitzner, or the German's

Tale_. He had written a first act in 1815, but as the MS. was mislaid he

made a fresh adaptation of the story which he rechristened _Werner, or the

Inheritance_. It was finished on the 20th of January and published on the

23rd of November 1822. _Werner_ is in parts _Kruitzner_ cut up into loose

blank verse, but it contains lines and passages of great and original

merit. Alone of Byron's plays it took hold of the stage. Macready's

"Werner" was a famous impersonation.

In the spring of 1822 a heavy and unlooked-for sorrow befell Byron.

Allegra, his natural daughter by Claire Clairmont, died at the convent of

Bagna Cavallo on the 20th of April 1822. She was in her sixth year, an

interesting and attractive child, and he had hoped that her companionship

would have atoned for his enforced separation from Ada. She is buried in a

nameless grave at the entrance of Harrow church. Soon after the death of

Allegra, Byron wrote the last of his eight plays, _The Deformed

Transformed_ (published by John Hunt, February 20, 1824). The "sources" are

Goethe's _Faust_, _The Three Brothers_, a novel by Joshua Pickersgill, and

various chronicles of the sack of Rome in 1527. The theme or _motif_ is the

interaction of personality and individuality. Remonstrances on the part of

publisher and critic induced him to turn journalist. The control of a

newspaper or periodical would enable him to publish what and as he pleased.

With this object in view he entered into a kind of literary partnership

with Leigh Hunt, and undertook to transport him, his wife and six children

to Pisa, and to lodge them in the Villa Lanfranchi. The outcome of this

arrangement was _The Liberal--Verse and Prose from the South_. Four numbers

were issued between October 1822 and June 1823. _The Liberal_ did not

succeed financially, and the joint menage was a lamentable failure.

_Correspondence of Byron and some of his Contemporaries_ (1828) was Hunt's

revenge for the slights and indignities which he suffered in Byron's

service. Yachting was one of the chief amusements of the English colony at

Pisa. A schooner, the "Bolivar," was built for Byron, and a smaller boat,

the "Don Juan" re-named "Ariel," for Shelley. Hunt arrived at Pisa on the

1st of July. On the 8th of July Shelley, who had remained in Pisa on Hunt's

account, started for a sail with his friend Williams and a lad named

Vivian. The "Ariel" was wrecked in the Gulf of Spezia and Shelley and his

companions were drowned. On the 16th of August Byron and Hunt witnessed the

"burning of Shelley" on the seashore near Via Reggio. Byron told Moore that

"all of Shelley was consumed but the _heart_." Whilst the fire was burning

Byron swam out to the "Bolivar" and back to the shore. The hot sun and the

violent exercise brought on one of those many fevers which weakened his

constitution and shortened his life.

The Austrian government would not allow the Gambas or the countess

Guiccioli to remain in Pisa. As a half measure Byron took a villa for them

at Montenero near Leghorn, but as the authorities were still dissatisfied

they removed to Genoa. Byron and Leigh Hunt left Pisa on the last day of

September. On reaching Genoa Byron took up his quarters with the Gambas at

the Casa Saluzzo, "a fine old palazzo with an extensive view over the bay,"

and Hunt and his party at the Casa Negroto with Mrs Shelley. Life at Genoa

was uneventful. Of Hunt and Mrs Shelley he saw as little as possible, and

though his still unpublished poems were at the service of _The Liberal_, he

did little or nothing to further its success. Each number was badly

received. Byron had some reason to fear that his popularity [v.04 p.0903]

was on the wane, and though he had broken with Murray and was offering _Don

Juan_ (cantos vi.-xii.) to John Hunt, the publisher of _The Liberal_, he

meditated a "run down to Naples" and a recommencement of _Childe Harold_.

There was a limit to his defiance of the "world's rebuke." Home politics

and the congress of Verona (November-December 1822) suggested a satire

entitled "The Age of Bronze" (published April 1, 1823). It is, as he said,

"stilted," and cries out for notes, but it embodies some of his finest and

most vigorous work as a satirist. By the middle of February (1823) he had

completed _The Island; or Christian and his Comrades_ (published June 26,

1823). The sources are Bligh's _Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty_, and

Mariner's _Account of the Tonga Islands_. Satire and tale are a reversion

to his earlier method. The execution of _The Island_ is hurried and

unequal, but there is a deep and tender note in the love-story and the

recital of the "feasts and loves and wars" of the islanders. The poetic

faculty has been "softened into feeling" by the experience of life.

When _The Island_ was finished, Byron went on with _Don Juan_. Early in

March the news reached him that he had been elected a member of the Greek

Committee, a small body of influential Liberals who had taken up the cause

of the liberation of Greece. Byron at once offered money and advice, and

after some hesitation on the score of health, determined "to go to Greece."

His first step was to sell the "Bolivar" to Lord Blessington, and to

purchase the "Hercules," a collier-built tub of 120 tons. On the 23rd of

July the "Hercules" sailed from Leghorn and anchored off Cephalonia on the

3rd of August. The party on board consisted of Byron, Pietro Gamba,

Trelawny, Hamilton Browne and six or seven servants. The next four months

were spent at Cephalonia, at first on board the "Hercules," in the harbour

of Argostoli and afterwards at Metaxata. The object of this delay was to

ascertain the real state of affairs in Greece. The revolutionary Greeks

were split up into parties, not to say factions, and there were several

leaders. It was a question to which leader he would attach himself. At

length a message reached him which inspired him with confidence. He

received a summons from Prince Alexander Mavrocordato, a man of birth and

education, urging him to come at once to Missolonghi, and enclosing a

request from the legislative body "to co-operate with Mavrocordato in the

organization of western Greece." Byron felt that he could act with a "clear

conscience" in putting himself at the disposal of a man whom he regarded as

the authorized leader and champion of the Greeks. He sailed from Argostoli

on the 29th of December 1823, and after an adventurous voyage landed at

Missolonghi on the 5th of January 1824. He met with a royal reception.

Byron may have sought, but he did not find, "a soldier's grave." During his

three months' residence at Missolonghi he accomplished little and he

endured much. He advanced large sums of money for the payment of the

troops, for repair and construction of fortifications, for the provision of

medical appliances. He brought opposing parties into line, and served as a

link between Odysseus, the democratic leader of the insurgents, and the

"prince" Mavrocordato. He was eager to take the field, but he never got the

chance. A revolt in the Morea, and the repeated disaffection of his Suliote

guard prevented him from undertaking the capture of Epacto, an exploit

which he had reserved for his own leadership. He was beset with

difficulties, but at length events began to move. On the 18th of March he

received an invitation from Odysseus and other chiefs to attend a

conference at Salona, and by the same messenger an offer from the

government to appoint him "governor-general of the enfranchised parts of

Greece." He promised to attend the conference but did not pledge himself to

the immediate acceptance of office. But to Salona he never came. "Roads and

rivers were impassable," and the conference was inevitably postponed.

His health had given way, but he does not seem to have realized that his

life was in danger. On the 15th of February he was struck down by an

epileptic fit, which left him speechless though not motionless. He

recovered sufficiently to conduct his business as usual, and to drill the

troops. But he suffered from dizziness in the head and spasms in the chest,

and a few days later he was seized with a second though slighter

convulsion. These attacks may have hastened but they did not cause his

death. For the first week of April the weather confined him to the house,

but on the 9th a letter from his sister raised his spirits and tempted him

to ride out with Gamba. It came on to rain, and though he was drenched to

the skin he insisted on dismounting and returning in an open boat to the

quay in front of his house. Two hours later he was seized with ague and

violent rheumatic pains. On the 11th he rode out once more through the

olive groves, attended by his escort of Suliote guards, but for the last

time. Whether he had got his deathblow, or whether copious blood-letting

made recovery impossible, he gradually grew worse, and on the ninth day of

his illness fell into a comatose sleep. It was reported that in his

delirium he had called out, half in English, half in Italian,

"Forward--forward--courage! follow my example--don't be afraid!" and that

he tried to send a last message to his sister and to his wife. He died at

six o'clock in the evening of the 19th of April 1824, aged thirty-six years

and three months. The Greeks were heartbroken. Mavrocordato gave orders

that thirty-seven minute-guns should be fired at daylight and decreed a

general mourning of twenty-one days. His body was embalmed and lay in

state. On the 25th of May his remains, all but the heart, which is buried

at Missolonghi, were sent back to England, and were finally laid beneath

the chancel of the village church of Hucknall-Torkard on the 16th of July

1824. The authorities would not sanction burial in Westminster Abbey, and

there is neither bust nor statue of Lord Byron in Poets' Corner.

The title passed to his first cousin as 7th baron, from whom the subsequent

barons were descended. The poet's daughter Ada (d. 1852) predeceased her

mother, but the barony of Wentworth went to her heirs. She was the first

wife of Baron King, who in 1838 was created 1st earl of Lovelace, and had

two sons (of whom the younger, b. 1839, d. 1906, was 2nd earl of Lovelace)

and a daughter, Lady Anne, who married Wilfrid S. Blunt (_q.v._). On the

death of the 2nd earl the barony of Wentworth went to his daughter and only

child, and the earldom of Lovelace to his half-brother by the 1st earl's

second wife.

Great men are seldom misjudged. The world passes sentence on them, and

there is no appeal. Byron's contemporaries judged him by the tone and

temper of his works, by his own confessions or self-revelations in prose

and verse, by the facts of his life as reported in the newspapers, by the

talk of the town. His letters, his journals, the testimony of a dozen

memorialists are at the disposal of the modern biographer. Moore thinks

that Byron's character was obliterated by his versatility, his mobility,

that he was carried away by his imagination, and became the thing he wished

to be, or conceived himself as becoming. But his nature was not

chameleon-like. Self-will was the very pulse of the machine. Pride ruled

his years. All through his life, as child and youth and man, his one aim

and endeavour was the subjection of other people's wishes to, his own. He

would subject even fate if he could. He has two main objects in view,

_glory_, in the French rather than the English use of the word, and

passion. It is hard to say which was the strongest or the dearest, but, on

the whole, within his "little life" passion prevailed. Other inclinations

he could master. Poetry was often but not always an exaltation and a

relief. He could fulfil his tasks in "hours of gloom." If he had not been a

great poet he would have gained credit as a painstaking and laborious man

of letters. His habitual temperance was the outcome of a stern resolve. He

had no scruples, but he kept his body in subjection as a means to an end.

In his youth Byron was a cautious spendthrift. Even when he was "cursedly

dipped" he knew what he was about; and afterwards, when his income was

sufficient for his requirements, he kept a hold on his purse. He loved

display, and as he admitted, spent money on women, but he checked his

accounts and made both ends meet. On the other hand, the "gift of

continency" he did not possess, or trouble himself to acquire. He was, to

use his own phrase, "passionate of body," and his desires were stronger

than his will. There are points of Byron's character with regard to which

opinion is divided. Candid he certainly was to the verge of brutality, but

was he sincere? Was [v.04 p.0904] he as melancholy as his poetry implies?

Did he pose as pessimist or misanthropist, or did he speak out of the

bitterness of his soul? It stands to reason that Byron knew that his sorrow

and his despair would excite public interest, and that he was not ashamed

to exhibit "the pageant of a bleeding heart." But it does not follow that

he was a hypocrite. His quarrel with mankind, his anger against fate, were

perfectly genuine. His outcry is, in fact, the anguish of a baffled will.

Byron was too self-conscious, too much interested in himself, to take any

pleasures in imaginary woes, or to credit himself with imaginary vices.

Whether he told the whole truth is another matter. He was naturally a

truthful man and his friends lived in dread of unguarded disclosures, but

his communications were not so free as they seemed. There was a string to

the end of the kite. Byron was kindly and generous by nature. He took

pleasure in helping necessitous authors, men and women, not at all _en

grand seigneur_, or without counting the cost, but because he knew what

poverty meant, and a fellow-feeling made him kind. Even in Venice he set

aside a fixed sum for charitable purposes. It was to his credit that

neither libertinism nor disgrace nor remorse withered at its root this herb

of grace. Cynical speeches with regard to friends and friendship, often

quoted to his disadvantage, need not be taken too literally. Byron talked

for effect, and in accordance with the whim of the moment. His acts do not

correspond with his words. Byron rejected and repudiated bath Protestant

and Catholic orthodoxy, but like the Athenians he was "exceedingly

religious." He could not, he did not wish to, detach himself from a belief

in an Invisible Power. "A fearful looking for of judgment" haunted him to

the last.

There is an increasing tendency on the part of modern critics to cast a

doubt on Byron's sanity. It is true that he inherited bad blood on both

sides of his family, that he was of a neurotic temperament, that at one

time he maddened himself with drink, but there is no evidence that his

brain was actually diseased. Speaking figuratively, he may have been "half

mad," but, if so, it was a derangement of the will, not of the mind. He was

responsible for his actions, and they rise up in judgment against him. He

put indulgence before duty. He made a byword of his marriage and brought

lifelong sorrow on his wife. If, as Goethe said, he was "the greatest

talent" of the 19th century, he associated that talent with scandal and

reproach. But he was born with certain noble qualities which did not fail

him at his worst. He was courageous, he was kind, and he loved truth rather

than lies. He was a worker and a fighter. He hated tyranny, and was

prepared to sacrifice money and ease and life in the cause of popular

freedom. If the issue of his call to arms was greater and other than he

designed or foresaw, it was a generous instinct which impelled him to begin

the struggle.

With regard to the criticism of his works, Byron's personality has always

confused the issue. Politics, religion, morality, have confused, and still

confuse, the issue. The question for the modern critic is, of what

permanent value is Byron's poetry? What did he achieve for art, for the

intellect, for the spirit, and in what degree does he still give pleasure

to readers of average intelligence? It cannot be denied that he stands out

from other poets of his century as a great creative artist, that his canvas

is crowded with new and original images, additions to already existing

types of poetic workmanship. It has been said that Byron could only

represent himself under various disguises, that Childe Harold and The

Corsair, Lara and Manfred and Don Juan, are variants of a single

personality, the egotist who is at war with his fellows, the generous but

nefarious sentimentalist who sins and suffers and yet is to be pitied for

his suffering. None the less, with whatever limitations as artist or

moralist, he invented characters and types of characters real enough and

distinct enough to leave their mark on society as well as on literature.

These masks or replicas of his own personality were formative of thought,

and were powerful agents in the evolution of sentiment and opinion. In

language which was intelligible and persuasive, under shapes and forms

which were suggestive and inspiring, Byron delivered a message of

liberation. There was a double motive at work in his energies as a poet. He

wrote, as he said, because "his mind was full" of his own loves, his own

griefs, but also to register a protest against some external tyranny of law

or faith or custom. His own countrymen owe Byron another debt. His poems

were a liberal education in the manners and customs of "the gorgeous East,"

in the scenery, the art, the history and politics of Italy and Greece. He

widened the horizon of his contemporaries, bringing within their ken

wonders and beauties hitherto unknown or unfamiliar, and in so doing he

heightened and cultivated, he "touched with emotion," the unlettered and

unimaginative many, that "reading public" which despised or eluded the

refinements and subtleties of less popular writers.

To the student of literature the first half of the 19th century is the age

of Byron. He has failed to retain his influence over English readers. The

knowledge, the culture of which he was the immediate channel, were speedily

available through other sources. The politics of the Revolution neither

interested nor affected the Liberalism or Radicalism of the middle classes.

It was not only the loftier and wholesomer poetry of Wordsworth and of

Tennyson which averted enthusiasm from Byron, not only moral earnestness

and religious revival but the optimism and the materialism of commercial

prosperity. As time went on, a severer and more intelligent criticism was

brought to bear on his handiwork as a poet. It was pointed out that his

constructions were loose and ambiguous, that his grammar was faulty, that

his rhythm was inharmonious, and it was argued that these defects and

blemishes were outward and visible signs of a lack of fineness in the man's

spiritual texture; that below the sentiment and behind the rhetoric the

thoughts and ideas were mean and commonplace. There was a suspicion of

artifice, a questioning of the passion as genuine. Poetry came to be

regarded more and more as a source of spiritual comfort, if not a religious

exercise, yet, in some sort, a substitute for religion. There was little or

nothing in Byron's poetry which fulfilled this want. He had no message for

seekers after truth. Matthew Arnold, in his preface to _The Poetry of

Byron_, prophesied that "when the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes

to recount the poetic glories in the century which has then just ended, her

first names with her will be those of Byron and Wordsworth."

That prophecy still waits fulfilment, but without doubt there has been a

reconsideration of Byron's place in literature, and he stands higher than

he did, say, in 1875. His quarrel with orthodoxy neither alarms nor

provokes the modern reader. Cynical or flippant turns of speech, which

distressed and outraged his contemporaries, are taken as they were meant,

for witty or humorous by-play. He is regarded as the herald and champion

_revolt_. He is praised for his "sincerity and strength," for his

single-mindedness, his directness, his audacity. A dispassionate criticism

recognizes the force and splendour of his rhetoric. The "purple patches"

have stood the wear and tear of time. Byron may have mismanaged the

Spenserian stanza, may have written up to or anticipated the guide-book,

but the spectacle of the bull-fight at Cadiz is "for ever warm," the "sound

of revelry" on the eve of Waterloo still echoes in our ears, and Marathon

and Venice, Greece and Italy, still rise up before us, "as from the stroke

of an enchanter's wand." It was, however, in another vein that Byron

achieved his final triumph. In _Don Juan_ he set himself to depict life as

a whole. The style is often misnamed the mock-heroic. It might be more

accurately described as humorous-realistic. His "plan was to have no plan"

in the sense of synopsis or argument, but in the person of his hero to

"unpack his heart," to avenge himself on his enemies, personal or

political, to suggest an apology for himself and to disclose a criticism

and philosophy of life. As a satirist in the widest sense of the word, as

an analyser of human nature, he comes, at whatever distance, after and yet

next to Shakespeare. It is a test of the greatness of _Don Juan_ that its

reputation has slowly increased and that, in spite of its supposed immoral

tendency, in spite of occasional grossness and voluptuousness, it has come

to be recognized as Byron's masterpiece. _Don Juan_ will be read for its

own sake, for its beauty, its humour, its faithfulness. It is a "hymn to

the earth," but it is a human sequence to "its own music chaunted."

[v.04 p.0905] In his own lifetime Byron stood higher on the continent of

Europe than in England or even in America. His works as they came out were

translated into French, into German, into Italian, into Russian, and the

stream of translation has never ceased to flow. The _Bride of Abydos_ has

been translated into ten, _Cain_ into nine languages. Of _Manfred_ there is

one Bohemian translation, two Danish, two Dutch, two French, nine German,

three Hungarian, three Italian, two Polish, one Romaic, one Rumanian, four

Russian and three Spanish translations. The dictum or verdict of Goethe

that "the English may think of Byron as they please, but this is certain

that they show no poet who is to be compared with him" was and is the

keynote of continental European criticism. A survey of European literature

is a testimony to the universality of his influence. Victor Hugo,

Lamartine, Delavigne, Alfred de Musset, in France; Börne, Müller and Heine

in Germany; the Italian poets Leopardi and Giusti; Pushkin and Lermontov

among the Russians; Michiewicz and Slowacki among the Poles--more or less,

as eulogists or imitators or disciples--were of the following of Byron.

This fact is beyond dispute, that after the first outburst of popularity he

has touched and swayed other nations rather than his own. The part he

played or seemed to play in revolutionary politics endeared him to those

who were struggling to be free. He stood for freedom of thought and of

life. He made himself the mouthpiece of an impassioned and welcome protest

against the hypocrisy and arrogance of his order and his race. He lived on

the continent and was known to many men in many cities. It has been argued

that foreigners are insensible to his defects as a writer, and that this

may account for an astonishing and perplexing preference. The cause is

rather to be sought in the quality of his art. It was as the creator of new

types, "forms more real than living man," that Byron appealed to the

artistic sense and to the imagination of Latin, Teuton or Slav. That "he

taught us little" of the things of the spirit, that he knew no cure for the

sickness of the soul, were considerations which lay outside the province of

literary criticism. "It is a mark," says Goethe (_Aus meinem Leben:

Dichtung und Wahrheit_, 1876, iii. 125), "of true poetry, that as a secular

gospel it knows how to free us from the earthly burdens which press upon

us, by inward serenity, by outward charm." Now of this "secular gospel" the

redemption from "real woes" by the exhibition of imaginary glory, and

imaginary delights, Byron was both prophet and evangelist.

Byron was 5 ft. 8 in. in height, and strongly built; only with difficulty

and varying success did he prevent himself from growing fat. At

five-and-thirty he was extremely thin. He was "very slightly lame," but he

was painfully conscious of his deformity and walked as little and as seldom

as he could. He had a small head covered and fringed with dark brown or

auburn curls. His forehead was high and narrow, of a marble whiteness. His

eyes were of a light grey colour, clear and luminous. His nose was straight

and well-shaped, but "from being a little too thick, it looked better in

profile than in front face." Moore says that it was in "the mouth and chin

that the great beauty as well as expression of his fine countenance lay."

The upper lip was of a Grecian shortness and the corners descending. His

complexion was pale and colourless. Scott speaks of "his beautiful pale

face--like a spirit's good or evil." Charles Matthews said that "he was the

only man to whom he could apply the word beautiful." Coleridge said that

"if you had seen him you could scarce disbelieve him... his eyes the open

portals of the sun--things of light and for light." He was likened to "the

god of the Vatican," the Apollo Belvidere.

The best-known portraits are: (1) Byron at the age of seven by Kay of

Edinburgh; (2) a drawing of Lord Byron at Cambridge by Gilchrist (1808);

(3) a portrait in oils by George Sanders (1809); (4) a miniature by Sanders

(1812); (5) a portrait in oils by Richard Westall, R.A. (1813); (6) a

portrait in oils (Byron in Albanian dress) by Thomas Phillips, R.A. (1813);

(7) a portrait in oils by Phillips (1813); (8-9) a sketch for a miniature,

and a miniature by James Holmes (1815); (10) a sketch by George Henry

Harlow (1818); (11) a portrait in oils by Vincenzio Camuccini (in the

Vatican) c. 1822; (12) a portrait in oils by W.H. West (1822); (13) a

sketch by Count D'Orsay (1823). Busts were taken by Bertel Thorwaldsen

(1817) and by Lorenzo Bartolini (1822). The statue (1829) in the library of

Trinity College, Cambridge, is by Thorwaldsen after the bust taken in 1817.

AUTHORITIES.--The best editions of Lord Byron's poetical works are: (1)

_The Works of Lord Byron with his Letters and Journals and his Life_, by

Thomas Moore (17 vols., London, John Murray, 1832, 1833); (2) _The Works of

Lord Byron_ (1 vol., 1837, reissued, 1838-1892); (3) _The Poetical Works of

Lord Byron_ (6 vols., 1855); (4) _The Works of Lord Byron_, new, revised

and enlarged edition, _Letters and Journals_, edited by G.E. Prothero, 6

vols., _Poetry_, edited by E.H. Coleridge (7 vols., 1898-1903); (5) _The

Poetical Works of Lord Byron_, with memoir by E.H. Coleridge (1 vol.,

1905).

The principal biographies, critical notices, memoirs, &c., are:--_Journey

through Albania... with Lord Byron_, by J.C. Hobhouse (1812; reprinted in 2

vols., 1813 and 1855); _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of ... Lord Byron_

[by Dr John Watkins] (1822); _Letters on the Character and Poetical Genius

of Lord Byron_, by Sir E. Brydges, Bart. (1824); _Correspondence of Lord

Byron with a Friend_ (3 vols., Paris, 1824); _Recollections of the Life of

Lord Byron_, by R.C. Dallas (1824); _Journal of the Conversations of Lord

Byron_, by Capt. T. Medwin (1824); _Last Days of Lord Byron_, by W. Parry

(1824); _Narrative of a Second Visit to Greece_, by E. Blaquiere (1825); _A

Narrative of Lord Byron's Last Journey to Greece_, by Count Gamba (1825);

_The Life, Writings, Opinions and Times of Lord Byron_ (3 vols., 1825);

_The Spirit of the Age_, by W. Hazlitt (1825); _Memoir of the Life and

Writings of Lord Byron_, by George Clinton (1826); _Correspondence of Byron

and some of his Contemporaries_, by J.H. Leigh Hunt (2 vols., 1828);

_Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life_, by Thomas

Moore (2 vols., 1830); _The Life of Lord Byron_, by J. Galt (1830);

_Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron_, by J. Kennedy (1830);

_Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington_ (1834);

_Critical and Historical Essays_, by T.B. Macaulay, i. 311-352 (1843);

_Lord Byron jugé par les témoins de sa vie_ (1869), _My Recollections of

Lord Byron_, by the Countess _Guiccioli_ (1869); _Lady Byron Vindicated, A

History of the Byron Controversy_, by H. Beecher Stowe (1870); _Lord Byron,

a Biography_, by Karl Elze (1872); _Kunst und Alterthum_, Goethe's

_Sämmtliche Werke_ (1874), vol. xiii. p. 641; _Memoir of the Rev. F.

Hodgson_ (2 vols., 1878); _The Real Lord Byron_, by J.C. Jeaffreson (2

vols., 1883); _A Selection_, &c., by A.C. Swinburne (1885); _Records of

Shelley, Byron and the Author_, by E.J. Trelawny (1887); _Memoirs of John

Murray_, by S. Smiles (2 vols., 1891); _Poetry of Byron_, chosen and

arranged by Matthew Arnold (preface) (1892); _The Siege of Corinth_, edited

by E. Kölbing (1893); _Prisoner of Chillon and other Poems_, edited by E.

Kölbing (1896); _The Works of Lord Byron_, edited by W. Henley, vol. i.

(1897); A. Brandl's "Goethes Verhältniss zu Byron," _Goethe Jahrbuch,

zwanzigster Band_ (1899); _Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature_,

by G. Brandis (6 vols., 1901-1905), translated from _Hauptströmungen der

Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts_, 4 Bde. (Berlin 1872-1876);

_Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature_, vol. iii. (1903) art.

"Byron," by T. Watts Dunton; _Studies in Poetry and Criticism_, by J.

Churton Collins (1905); _Lord Byron, sein Leben_, &c., by Richard

Ackermann; _Byron_, 3 vols. in the _Biblioteka velikikh pisatelei pod

redaktsei_, edited by S.A. Vengesova (St Petersburg, 1906): a variorum

translation; _Byron et le romantisme français_, by Edmond Estève (1907).

(E. H. C.)

[1] An anonymous work entitled _The Life, Writings, &c. of ... Lord Byron_

(3 vols., 1825) purports to give "Recollections of the Lately Destroyed

Manuscript." To judge by internal evidence (see "The Wedding Day," &c. ii.

278-284) there is some measure of truth in this assertion, but the work as

a whole is untrustworthy.

BYRON, HENRY JAMES (1834-1884), English playwright, son of Henry Byron, at

one time British consul at Port-au-Prince, was born in Manchester in

January 1834. He entered the Middle Temple as a student in 1858, with the

intention of devoting his time to play-writing. He soon ceased to make any

pretence of legal study, and joined a provincial company as an actor. In

this line he never made any real success; and, though he continued to act

for years, chiefly in his own plays, he had neither originality nor charm.

Meanwhile he wrote assiduously, and few men have produced so many pieces of

so diverse a nature. He was the first editor of the weekly comic paper,

_Fun_, and started the short-lived _Comic Trials_. His first successes were

in burlesque; but in 1865 he joined Miss Marie Wilton (afterwards Lady

Bancroft) in the management of the Prince of Wales's theatre, near

Tottenham Court Road. Here several of his pieces, comedies and

extravaganzas were produced with success; but, upon his severing the

partnership two years later, and starting management on his own account in

the provinces, he was financially unfortunate. The commercial success of

his life was secured with _Our Boys_, which was played at the Vaudeville

from January 1875 till April 1879--a then unprecedented "run." _The Upper

Crust_, another of his successes, gave a congenial opportunity to Mr J.L.

Toole for one of his [v.04 p.0906] inimitably broad character-sketches.

During the last few years of his life Byron was in frail health; he died in

Clapham on the 11th of April 1884. H.J. Byron was the author of some of the

most popular stage pieces of his day. Yet his extravaganzas have no wit but

that of violence; his rhyming couplets are without polish, and decorated

only by forced and often pointless puns. His sentiment had T.W. Robertson's

insipidity without its freshness, and restored an element of vulgarity

which his predecessor had laboured to eradicate from theatrical tradition.

He could draw a "Cockney" character with some fidelity, but his _dramatis

personae_ were usually mere puppets for the utterance of his jests. Byron

was also the author of a novel, _Paid in Full_ (1865), which appeared

originally in _Temple Bar_. In his social relations he had many friends,

among whom he was justly popular for geniality and imperturbable good

temper.

BYRON, JOHN BYRON, 1ST BARON (c. 1600-1652), English cavalier, was the

eldest son of Sir John Byron (d. 1625), a member of an old Lancashire

family which had settled at Newstead, near Nottingham. During the third

decade of the 17th century Byron was member of parliament for the town and

afterwards for the county of Nottingham; and having been knighted and

gained some military experience he was an enthusiastic partisan of Charles

I. during his struggle with the parliament. In December 1641 the king made

him lieutenant of the Tower of London, but in consequence of the persistent

demand of the House of Commons he was removed from this position at his own

request early in 1642. At the opening of the Civil War Byron joined Charles

at York. He was present at the skirmish at Powick Bridge; he commanded his

own regiment of horse at Edgehill and at Roundway Down, where he was

largely responsible for the royalist victory; and at the first battle of

Newbury Falkland placed himself under his orders. In October 1643 he was

created Baron Byron of Rochdale, and was soon serving the king in Cheshire,

where the soldiers sent over from Ireland augmented his forces. His defeat

at Nantwich, however, in January 1644, compelled him to retire into

Chester, and he was made governor of this city by Prince Rupert. At Marston

Moor, as previously at Edgehill, Byron's rashness gave a great advantage to

the enemy; then after fighting in Lancashire and North Wales he returned to

Chester, which he held for about twenty weeks in spite of the king's defeat

at Naseby and the general hopelessness of the royal cause. Having obtained

favourable terms he surrendered the city in February 1646. Byron took some

slight part in the second Civil War, and was one of the seven persons

excepted by parliament from all pardon in 1648. But he had already left

England, and he lived abroad in attendance on the royal family until his

death in Paris in August 1652. Although twice married Byron left no

children, and his title descended to his brother Richard (1605-1679), who

had been governor of Newark. Byron's five other brothers served Charles I.

during the Civil War, and one authority says that the seven Byrons were all

present at Edgehill.

BYRON, HON. JOHN (1723-1786), British vice-admiral, second son of the 4th

Lord Byron, and grandfather of the poet, was born on the 8th of November

1723. While still very young, he accompanied Anson in his voyage of

discovery round the world. During many successive years he saw a great deal

of hard service, and so constantly had he to contend, on his various

expeditions, with adverse gales and dangerous storms, that he was nicknamed

by the sailors, "Foul-weather Jack." It is to this that Lord Byron alludes

in his _Epistle to Augusta_:--

"A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past

Recalling as it lies beyond redress,

Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore,

He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore."

Among his other expeditions was that to Louisburg in 1760, where he was

sent in command of a squadron to destroy the fortifications. And in 1764 in

the "Dolphin" he went for a prolonged cruise in the South Seas. In 1768 he

published a _Narrative_ of some of his early adventures with Anson, which

was to some extent utilized by his grandson in _Don Juan_. In 1769 he was

appointed governor of Newfoundland. In 1775 he attained his flag rank, and

in 1778 became a vice-admiral. In the same year he was despatched with a

fleet to watch the movements of the Count d'Estaing, and in July 1779

fought an indecisive engagement with him off Grenada. He soon after

returned to England, retiring into private life, and died on the 10th of

April 1786.

BYSTRÖM, JOHAN NIKLAS (1783-1848), Swedish sculptor, was born on the 18th

of December 1783 at Philipstad. At the age of twenty he went to Stockholm

and studied for three years under Sergel. In 1809 he gained the academy

prize, and in the following year visited Rome. He sent home a beautiful

work, "The Reclining Bacchante," in half life size, which raised him at

once to the first rank among Swedish sculptors. On his return to Stockholm

in 1816 he presented the crown prince with a colossal statue of himself,

and was entrusted with several important works. Although he was appointed

professor of sculpture at the academy, he soon returned to Italy, and with

the exception of the years from 1838 to 1844 continued to reside there. He

died at Rome in 1848. Among Byström's numerous productions the best are his

representations of the female form, such as "Hebe," "Pandora," "Juno

suckling Hercules," and the "Girl entering the Bath." His colossal statues

of the Swedish kings are also much admired.

BYTOWNITE, a rock-forming mineral belonging to the plagioclase (_q.v._)

series of the felspars. The name was originally given (1835) by T. Thomson,

to a greenish-white felspathic mineral found in a boulder near Bytown (now

the city of Ottawa) in Ontario, but this material was later shown on

microscopical examination to be a mixture. The name was afterwards applied

by G. Tschermak to those plagioclase felspars which lie between labradorite

and anorthite; and this has been generally adopted by petrologists. In

chemical composition and in optical and other physical characters it is

thus much nearer to the anorthite end of the series than to albite. Like

labradorite and anorthite, it is a common constituent of basic igneous

rocks, such as gabbro and basalt. Isolated crystals of bytownite bounded by

well-defined faces are unknown.

(L. J. S.)

BYWATER, INGRAM (1840- ), English classical scholar, was born in London on

the 27th of June 1840. He was educated at University and King's College

schools, and at Queen's College, Oxford. He obtained a first class in

Moderations (1860) and in the final classical schools (1862), and became

fellow of Exeter (1863), reader in Greek (1883), regius professor of Greek

(1893-1908), and student of Christ Church. He received honorary degrees

from various universities, and was elected corresponding member of the

Prussian Academy of Sciences. He is chiefly known for his editions of Greek

philosophical works: _Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae_ (1877); _Prisciani Lydi

quae extant_ (edited for the Berlin Academy in the _Supplementum

Aristolelicum_, 1886); Aristotle, _Ethica Nicomachea_ (1890), _De Arte

Poetica_ (1898); _Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the Nicomachean

Ethics_ (1892).