And yet, while he was mocking in this fashion, he could write such mournful lines as these in Childe Harold:—

CANTO I
IX
"And none did love him: though to hall and bower
He gather'd revellers from far and near,
He knew them flatt'rers of the festal hour;
The heartless parasites of present cheer.
Yea! none did love him—not his lemans dear—
But pomp and power alone are woman's care,
And where these are light Eros finds a feere;
Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.
X
Childe Harold had a mother—not forgot,
Though parting from that mother he did shun;
A sister whom he loved, but saw her not
Before his weary pilgrimage begun:
If friends he had, he bade adieu to none.
Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel:
Ye, who have known what 'tis to dote upon
A few dear objects, will in sadness feel
Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal.
XI
His house, his home, his heritage, his lands,
The laughing dames in whom he did delight,
Whose large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands,
Might shake the saintship of an anchorite,
And long had fed his youthful appetite;
His goblets brimm'd with every costly wine,
And all that mote to luxury invite,
Without a sigh he left, to cross the brine,
And traverse Paynim shores, and pass Earth's central line."

And it was in this spirit that he left England to begin his early travels; and if, perchance, any member of the aristocracy inquired who this young Lord Byron was who had inscribed his name on the list of peers, those who were best informed would reply—

"He is a young rake, grand-nephew of the old Byron who killed Chaworth in a duel; he possesses an old tumbledown Abbey; and a fortune that has been cut up and squandered. When he was at college, where he never did any good, he kept a bear; since he left college he has associated with prostitutes and swindlers, drinking till tipsy out of a human skull, and, when drunk, writing poetry."

Byron left his country at war with his fellow-men, and one stanza of the first canto of the poem just referred to was enough to set him at loggerheads with women too—a much more serious matter:—

CANTO I
LVIII
"The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impress'd
Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch:
Her lips, whose kisses pout to leave their nest,
Bid man be valiant ere he merit such:
Her glance how wildly beautiful! how much
Hath Phœbus woo'd in vain to spoil her cheek,
Which glows yet smoother from his amorous clutch!
Who round the North for paler dames would seek?
How poor their forms appear! how languid, wan and weak!"

Such an anathema as this, hurled by the poet at that England which Shakespeare compared to a swan's nest in the midst of a great lake, met with widespread notoriety; for Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the first canto of which Byron wrote during his travels, had a tremendous reception.

Byron visited Portugal, the South of Spain, Sardinia and Sicily; then he went through Albania and Illyria, travelled through the Morea, stopping at Thebes, Athens, Delphi and Constantinople. If we are to believe his own words, he looked forward with dread to his return:—

"Indeed, my prospects are not very pleasant. Embarrassed in my private affairs, indifferent to public, solitary without the wish to be social, with a body a little enfeebled by a succession of fevers, but a spirit, I trust, yet unbroken, I am returning home without a hope, and almost without a desire. The first thing I shall have to encounter will be a lawyer, the next a creditor, then colliers, farmers, surveyors, and all the agreeable attachments to estates out of repair, and contested coal-pits. In short, I am sick and sorry, and when I have a little repaired my irreparable affairs, away I shall march, either to campaign in Spain, or back again to the East, where I can at least have cloudless skies and a cessation from impertinence."