"Selected Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge."—George.
"S. T. Coleridge; a Narrative of the Events of his Life."—Campbell.
"Selections from the Poets; Coleridge."—Lang.
"Table Talk" ("Bohn's Standard Library")—Ed. Ashe.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
(1788–1824)
George Gordon, sixth Lord Byron, was born in London. His father, a profligate captain of the guards, having squandered most of his wife's property, she parted from him, retiring on a small income to Aberdeen, Scotland. In his eleventh year, however, the son inherited the title and estate of his grand-uncle, and the mother and son left Scotland and settled down at Newstead Abbey, near Nottingham, in Sherwood Forest.
Byron prepared for the university at Harrow and then went to Cambridge, where he published "Hours of Idleness," a volume of verse of no merit that brought down the unduly savage review of Brougham, to which Byron replied anonymously with "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," a dashing satire that he later suppressed, when he became a friend of many whom he there held up to ridicule.
Soon after receiving his M.A. he made a two years' tour of Portugal, Spain, Albania, and Greece, composing meanwhile the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," published in 1812. So immediate was its success that he literally "woke up one morning and found himself famous." Though not so fine as the last two cantos, yet they are full of the new spirit of Romanticism. The poetic tales of "The Giaour," "The Bride of Abydos," "The Corsair," and "Lara" followed in quick succession. All this time he had felt financial pressure and several of his friends had died, including his mother, whom he loved notwithstanding her uncertain temper, so that his life had by no means been happy, and the cynical tone of much of his verse was a direct expression of his feelings. His health was also marred by a tendency to corpulence which he tried to check by a rigid and scanty diet, while a deformed foot gave him both pain and constant embarrassment.