"I awoke one morning and found myself famous."
He was only just twenty-three years old.
"The subject," says Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire (Two Duchesses, pp. 375, 376), "of conversation, of curiosity, of enthusiasm almost, one might say, of the moment is not Spain or Portugal, Warriors or Patriots, but Lord Byron!" "He returned," she continues, "sorry for the severity of some of his lines (in the English Bards), and with a new poem, Childe Harold, which he published. This poem is on every table, and himself courted, visited, flattered, and praised whenever he appears. He has a pale, sickly, but handsome countenance, a bad figure, and, in short, he is really the only topic almost of every conversation—the men jealous of him, the women of each other."
"Lord Byron," writes Lady Harriet Leveson Gower to the Duke of Devonshire, May 10, 1812 (Letters of Harriet, Countess Granville, vol. i. p. 34), "is still upon a pedestal, and Caroline William doing homage. I have made acquaintance with him. He is agreeable, but I feel no wish for any further intimacy. His countenance is fine when it is in repose; but the moment it is in play, suspicious, malignant, and consequently repulsive. His manner is either remarkably gracious and conciliatory, with a tinge of affectation, or irritable and impetuous, and then, I am afraid, perfectly natural."
Rogers (
Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers
, pp. 232, 233) says,
"After Byron had become the rage, I was frequently amused at the manoeuvres of certain noble ladies to get acquainted with him by means of me; for instance, I would receive a note from Lady ——, requesting the pleasure of my company on a particular evening, with a postscript, 'Pray, could you not contrive to bring Lord Byron with you?' Once, at a great party given by Lady Jersey, Mrs. Sheridan ran up to me and said, 'Do, as a favour, try if you can place Lord Byron beside me at supper!'"
"Forgiveness to the injured does belong,
But they ne'er pardon, who have done the wrong."