His letters show him on Parnassus, where a flight of eagles seemed an omen of his destiny; at Athens, where he lodged with the mother of the "Maid of Athens"; standing among the ruins of Ephesus and the mounds of Troy; swimming the Hellespont in honour of Leander; at Constantinople, where the prospect of the Golden Horn seemed the fairest of all; at Patras, in the woeful debility of fever; and again at Athens, making acquaintance with Lady Hester Stanhope and "Abyssinian" Bruce. Through all these varied scenes his mind was brooding on the verses of the "Childe Harold."
On Byron's return to England, in July, 1811, that poem was placed in Mr. Murray's hands, and thus was laid the foundation of a long connection between author and publisher. Mrs. Byron died on August 1. With all her faults she had loved her son deeply, and he could at least look back upon dutiful and kindly behaviour to her. It was in November that I first had the pleasure of meeting the poet at dinner, and what I chiefly remarked was the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his voice and manner, and his marked kindness. From our first meeting our acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship.
On February 27, 1812, a day or two before the appearance of "Childe Harold," Byron made the first trial of his eloquence in the House of Lords, and it was on this occasion that he made the acquaintance of Lord Holland. The subject of debate was the Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill. Workmen were rioting and wrecking because their labour had been displaced by the introduction of machinery, and Byron's view was that "we must not allow mankind to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism"--"the maintenance of the industrious poor is of greater consequence than the enrichment of monopolists"--"I have seen the state of these miserable men, and it is a disgrace to a civilised country." The speech was well received. The impression produced two days later by Byron's "Childe Harold" was as instantaneous as it has proved deep and lasting. Even the dashes of scepticism, with which he darkened his strain, served only to heighten its success. The Prince Regent had the poet presented to him, and the author of "Marmion" offered his praise. In the following May appeared the wild and beautiful fragment, "The Giaour." This new offspring of his genius was hailed with wonder and delight, and on my rejoining him in town this spring, I found an intense enthusiasm for Byron throughout the literary and social world. But his mind was already turning to freedom and solitude, and his third and last speech in the House of Lords was made in June.
III.--Byron's Unfortunate Marriage
Byron's restlessness is reflected throughout his "Journal," which he began at this time. He had dreams of living in the Grecian Islands and of adopting an Eastern manner of life; but in December, 1813, when "The Bride of Abydos" was published, he was still feverishly dissipating himself in England.
A significant entry in the "Journal" says: "A wife would be the salvation of me," and Lord Byron became a suitor for the hand of Miss Milbanke, a relative of Lady Melbourne. His proposal was not at first accepted, but a correspondence ensued between them, and in September, 1814, after the appearance of "The Corsair" and "Lara," they became formally affianced. I was much in his society at this time, and was filled with foreboding anxieties, which the unfortunate events that followed only too fully justified. At the end of December he set out for Seaham, the seat of Sir Ralph Milbanke, the lady's father, and on January 2, 1815, was married. On March 8, he wrote to me from Seaham: "Bell is in health, and unvaried good-humour and behaviour."
Lord Byron's pecuniary embarrassments now accumulated upon him, and just a year after his marriage, and shortly after the birth of their daughter, I received a letter which breathed a profound melancholy, due partly to his difficulties, but more, I thought, to a return of the restless and roving spirit. I replied: "Do tell me you are happier than that letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied." It was only a few weeks later that Lady Byron adopted the resolution of parting from him. She had left London in January on a visit to her father, and Byron was to follow her. They had parted in the utmost kindness; she wrote him a letter, full of playfulness and affection, on the road; but immediately on her arrival her father wrote to acquaint Lord Byron that she would return to him no more. At the time when he had to stand this unexpected shock, his financial troubles, which had led to eight or nine executions in his house within the year, had arrived at their utmost; and at a moment when, to use his own expression, he was "standing alone on his hearth, with his household gods shivered around him," he was also doomed to receive the startling intelligence that the wife who had just parted with him in kindness, had parted with him for ever.
I must quote from a letter he wrote me in March: "The fault was not in my choice, unless in choosing at all; for I do not believe--and I must say it in the very dregs of all this bitter business--that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had any reproach to make her while with me. Where there is blame, it belongs to myself, and if I cannot redeem, I must bear it."
IV.--Wanderings and Work
On April 25, 1816, being now twenty-eight years of age, Byron took final leave of England, and sailed with two servants for Ostend. His route, by Flanders and the Rhine, may be traced in his matchless verses. He settled in Geneva, where he met Shelley and Mrs. Shelley; they boated on the lake and walked together, and Byron's susceptible mind was deeply influenced by his mystical companion. We may discover traces of that vague sublimity in the third canto of "Childe Harold," and traces also of Mr. Wordsworth's mood which Byron absorbed from Shelley's favourite author.