Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/140

 On leaving Cambridge he had settled at Newstead, given up in ruinous condition by Lord Grey in the previous April, where he had a few rooms made habitable, and celebrated his coming of age by some meagre approach to the usual festivities. A favourable decision in the courts had given him hopes of Rochdale, and made him, he says, 60,000l. richer. The suit, however, dragged on through his life. Meanwhile he had to raise money to make repairs and maintain his establishment at Newstead, with which he declares his resolution never to part (Letter of 6 March 1809). The same letter announces the death of his friend Lord Falkland in a duel. In spite of his own difficulties Byron tried to help the widow, stood godfather to her infant, and left a 500l. note for his godchild in a breakfast cup. In a letter from Mrs. Byron (Athenæum, 6 Sept. 1884) this is apparently mentioned as a loan to Lady Falkland. On 13 March he took his seat in the House of Lords. Lord Carlisle had acknowledged the receipt of ‘Hours of Idleness,’ the second edition of which had been dedicated to him, in a ‘tolerably handsome letter,’ but would take no trouble about introducing his ward. Byron was accompanied to the house by no one but Dallas, a small author, whose sister was the wife of Byron's uncle, George Anson, and who had recently sought his acquaintance. Byron felt his isolation, and sulkily put aside a greeting from the chancellor (Eldon). He erased a compliment to Carlisle and substituted a bitter attack in his satire which was now going through the press under Dallas's superintendence. ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers’ appeared in the middle of March, and at once made its mark. He prepared a second edition at the end of April with additions and a swaggering prose postscript, announcing his departure from England and declaring that his motive was not fear of his victims' antipathies. The satire is vigorously written and more carefully polished than Byron's later efforts; but has not the bitterness, the keenness, or the fine workmanship of Pope. The retort upon his reviewers is only part of a long tirade upon the other poets of the day. In 1816 Byron made some annotations on the poem at Geneva, admitting the injustice of many lines. A third and fourth edition appeared in 1810 and 1811; in the last year he prepared a fifth for the press. He suppressed it, as many of his adversaries were now on friendly terms with him, and destroyed all but one copy, from which later editions have been printed. He told Murray (23 Oct. 1817) that he would never consent to its republication.

Byron had for some time contemplated making his ‘grand tour.’ In the autumn of 1808 he got up a play at Newstead; he buried his Newfoundland, Boatswain, who died of madness 18 Nov. 1808, under a monument with a misanthropical inscription; and in the following spring entertained his college friends. C. S. Matthews describes their amusements in a letter published by Moore. They dressed themselves in theatrical costumes of monks (with a recollection, perhaps, of Medmenham), and drank burgundy out of a human skull found near the abbey, which Byron had fashioned into a cup with an appropriate inscription. Such revelries suggested extravagant rumours of reckless orgies and ‘harems’ in the abbey. Moore assures us that the life there was in reality ‘simple and inexpensive,’ and the scandal of limited application.

Byron took leave of England by some verses to Mrs. Musters about his blighted affections, and sailed from Falmouth in the Lisbon packet on 2 July 1809. Hobhouse accompanied him, and he took three servants, Fletcher (who followed him to the last), Rushton, and Joe Murray. From Lisbon he rode across Spain to Seville and Cadiz, and thence sailed to Gibraltar in the Hyperion frigate in the beginning of August. He sent home Murray and Rushton with instructions for the proper education of the latter at his own expense. He sailed in the packet for Malta on 19 Aug. 1809, in company with Galt, who afterwards wrote his life, and who was rather amused by the affectations of the youthful peer. At Malta he fell in with a Mrs. Spencer Smith with a romantic history (see Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes (1834), xv. 1–74), to whom he addressed the verses ‘To Florence,’ ‘stanzas composed during a thunderstorm,’ and a passage in ‘Childe Harold’ (ii. st. 30–3), explaining that his heart was now past the power of loving. From Malta he reached Prevesa in the Spider, brig of war, on 19 Sept. 1809. He thence visited Ali Pasha at Tepelen, and was nearly lost in a Turkish man-of-war on his return. In November he travelled to Missolonghi (21 Nov.) through Acarnania with a guard of Albanians. He stayed a fortnight at Patras, and thence left for Athens. He reached Athens on Christmas eve and lodged with Theodora Macri, widow of the English vice-consul, who had three lovely daughters. The eldest, Theresa, celebrated by Byron as the Maid of Athens, became Mrs. Black. She fell into poverty, and an appeal for her support was made in the ‘Times’ on 23 March 1872. She died in October 1875 (Times, 21, 25, 27 Oct. 1875). He sailed from Athens for