Lord Byron

.Byron's life and work is like a book which seems at first sight to be dominated by it's highly coloured plates. First there is the standard portrait - a magnificently turbaned profile posed against a stormy sky - Byron dressed up as a Byronic Hero. Then comes a picture of Newstead Abbey, a suitably 'Gothic' retreat for Byron and his friends, sitting up late in 'friars' dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not out of the 'skull cup'. Byron is seen at Cambridge, sharing his college rooms with a bear; and on his entry into society - the pale 'homme fatale' of the drawing-rooms: 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'. Women come into the picture: Annabella Milbanke, whom he so unaccountably and unfortunately married; Caroline Lamb, who made a public scandal of her love for him; and Augusta Leigh, his half-sister, with whom he was more in love with any other woman, and one of whose many children he considered to be his. Byron is next seen leaving England on account of the moral indignation aroused by his private life. The scene shifts to the Mediterranean. The colours become brighter: Byron swimming the Hellespont; Byron travelling through Italy with the Countess Guiccioli, and a caravan of monkeys, dogs and peacocks; finally, Byron dead in the cause of Greek liberation. 'My God,' wrote Jane Welsh to Thomas Carlyle, 'if they had said that the sun or the moon was gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in the creation than the words, "Byron is dead!"' That was how Byron appeared to the majority of his contempories: as a luminary, a dynamic force. His works were translated into all the languages of Europe, the litary scene was thronged with 'Byronic' young poets, and the progeny of his Heroes multiplied yearly. Today the flamboyant aspects of his personality have not only ceased to dazzle, they even tend to detract from our appreciation of Byron's work, seeming to be simply the successful poses of a man playing to the gallery of his own day. They do not, however, represent the whole of Bryon. He had many other facts. He was an aristocrat who rebelled against social injustice; a man who not only spoke about liberty but worked for it; an affectionate and loyal friend; an immensely gay correspondent; a trenchant satirist. Byron was born 1788. His early childhood was spent in Scotland in an atmosphere of disorder and poverty, dominated by an hysterical mother and a dissolute nurse. These years left their legacy of nervous insecurity, only partly concealed by the aristocratic facade provided by his title and his handsome patrician features. In 1800 he went to Harrow and in 1805 to Trinity College, Cambridge, Unlike Milton and Wordsworth, Byron did not regard his studies at Cambridge as part of the discipline essential to becoming a great poet. He did not draft out plans for any new English epic or record the progress of a poet's mind. He made friends, went to parties, and swam at Grantchester: 'We have several parties here, and this evening a large assortment of jockeys, gamblers, boxers, authors, parsons, and poets, sup with me, - a precious mixture but they go on will together; and for me, I am a 'spice' of everything...'But he goes on to say that he has 380 lines of a satire written and that his published verses have just been 'praised to the skies' in one review and 'abused greatly' in another. In 1807, when this letter was written, Byron had brought out two volumes of poetry: 'Hours of Idleness' and 'Poems on Various Occasions'. The Interest of these early poems is largely biographical. Though they showed that Byron wrote verse with great facility, they did not seem to hold out much promise for the future. Yet the very next year he wrote a lyric, 'When We Two Parted In Silence and Tears', which had all the qualities of his best work in this kind. It is quite simple both in thought and expression - there are no conceits, no soaring flights of fancy - but beneath the quiet rhythm there is a strong current of feeling.