Page:A dictionary of printers and printing.djvu/898

 NINETEENTH CENTURY.

889

those political opinions which time has proved to be paramount; and, whatever miffht have been the inducement of the " constitutional society," to destroy his property, and force him to become au exile for many years from his native land, reflects but little credit on those who, while they defended " church and state," were fomenting riots in the lower orders to burn and destroy the

groperty of those who dared to speak the truth. [r. Faulkner died at Burnley, in La n cas h ire, in the eighty-sixth year of his i^.

1834, April 19. Died, George Gordon Br RON, lord Byron, whose name is imperishably connected with the literature of our native land. He was the grandson of admiral John Byron,* and was born in London, January 22, 1788. His fathert" died three years afterwards, leaving Mrs. Byron in embarrassed circumstances. They retired to Aberdeen, where he received the first rudiments of his education, and braced his limbs upon the mountains of the neighbourhood. William, the fifth lord Byron, died at Newstead abbev, Nottinghamshire, May 17, 1798, and as the descent both of the titles and estates was to heirs male, he was succeeded by his great nephew, and thus the state and prospects of the heir were completely changed, when he was little more than ten years old. Upon the change in his fortune, lord Byron was placed as a ward under the guardianship of his relation, the earl of Carlisle, and the tuition of Dr. Drury,^ at Har- row, and from thence, at the age of sixteen, to Trinity college, Cambridge, where he remained only three years. In the year 1807, while at Newstead abbey, lord Byron arranged, and caused to be printed at Newark, a small collection of his poems, under the whimsical title of Hourt of IdUneu. By George Gordon, lord Byron, a minor. The Edinburgh reviewers thought proper to comment, in very harsh and unbecoming language, upon these early efiusions of the roung lord. Their critique elicited from his lordship's pen one of the bitterest and most powerful satires ever published. His pen, how- ever, was not entirely dipped in gall; on the contrary, there are many very beautiful lines, eulogizing the productions or Gifford, Henry Kirke White, Sotheby,§ MacneilJI Crabbe, Shee, Rogers, and Campbell. Up to the time of his majority, the noble lord continued to follow his fancies, and unhappily his life was one of riot and dissipation, the miserable consequences of which were soon apparent. At length, in July, 1809, in company with John Cam Hobhouse,be


 * born at Newstead, Nov. S, 1793 ; died April 10, 1786.

t Captain John Byron wai born Feb. 7, 1756, and died at Valenciennes, Au^;nst 2, 1791.

t Rev. Joaeph Drory, D.D., late head master of Har- row, was born in LiOndon, Feb. II, 17SO; died Jan. 9, IBM.

i William Sotheby, esq., F.R.S., F.A.S., itc. was born in London, Nor g, 1757. He was a gentleman of con- sidenible fortune, and of liberal education. He was the translator of Oberon, a poem from the German of Wieland. and of the Qeorgia of Virj^ ; and author of SauJ, an •pic poem, besides other works. He died Dec. 30, ISSS.

I Hector Macneil, one of the most deservedly popular poets of Scotland, and author of Scotland's SeaUh, and the ITan 0/ War, of which IO,(KH) copies were sold In one month. He died at Edinburgh, March 15, ISI8.

I

embarked at Falmouth for Lisbon, and after visiting Seville and Cadiz, he sailed for the Morea. After an absence of nearly three yean, lord Byron revisited his native shores, and exhibited the advantages of travelling in his Childe Harold, which is full of splendid descrip- tions and noble meditations, and the supposed identity of the hero with the poet, excited at once admiration and curiosity. This poem is constructed on the Spenserian stanza, which suits admirably well with the sombre and con- templative character of the poem. Thus as all adnured the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold, all were prepared to greet the author with that fame which is the poet's best reward, and which is due to one who strikes out a new and original line of composition. The keen and scrutinizing glance which the poet had cast on eastern characters and customs soon manifested itself in the pro- duction of other poems, all of which were pro- duced with a celerity which was rivalled only by their successes. <

On Jan. 3, 1815, lord Byron married, at Seham, in the county of Durham, the only daughter of sir Ralph Milbank Noel, bart., and in the same year she brought him a daughter.*

Ada, sole daughter of my boose and heart I

Within a few weeks, however, after that event, a separation took place, for which various causes have been stated, none of which appears very creditable to the noble poet. This difference excited a great sensation at the time, and was the last stroke to the domestic happiness of his lord- ship. He left England for France, passed through Belgium to the Rhine, as far as Basle ; then to Switzerland, and at length took up his abode at Venice, where he completed his C^iUe Harold. At Venice he avoided, as much as

?ossible, any intercourse with his countrymen, n 1819, he formed his acquaintance with the countess Guiccioli, a young and beautiful Romagnese, who was married but a short time before lord Byron first inet with her to an old and wealthy widower. Our limits compel us to be brief; and as the events of his lordship's life are well known, we must pass on to the period when he was induced to leave Italy, and Join the Greeks struggling for emancipation. It was in Greece that his high poetical laculties had been first fully developed. Greece, a land of the most venerable and illustrious history, of peculi- arly grand and beautiful scenery, inhabited by various races of the most wild and picturesque manners, was to him the land of excitement. It was necessarily the chosen and favourite spot of a man of powerful and original intellect, of quick and sensible feelings, of a restless and un- tameablc spirit, of various information, and who, above all, was satiated with common enjoy- ments, and disgusted with what appeared to him

ISli 1 married to the tight bOD. lord King (now viscoant Lovelace) July 8, ISSS, and gave birth to a son and heir May 19, isa«.
 * AuKUSta Ada 87100 was born in London, Dec. 9,

5 T

VjOOQ IC