Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/684

612 studied the characters of living Venice. It was not till four years afterwards that he satisfied himself as to the motive, and the discovery of an old document afterwards proved that his reading of history was correct. In other cases he showed the same studious care for accuracy, the very opposite of rash and dashing identification of characters with himself. In most of his tales and dramas there is an historical basis, and the basis is scrupulously ascertained. He particularly prided himself upon the truth of his local colouring.

The most interesting and complete portrait of Byron is perhaps that drawn by Lady Blessington, who saw him at Genoa a few months before his departure for Greece. It is not so favourable as some, but it is peculiarly valuable because taken from a definite point of view, that of a clever woman of the world and practised critic of appearance and manner. "I had fancied him," she says, "taller, with a more dignified and commanding air, and I looked in vain for the hero-looking sort of person with whom I had so long identified him in imagination. His appearance is, however, highly prepossessing, his head is finely shaped, and the forehead open, high, and noble, his eyes are grey and full of expression, but one is visibly larger than the other, his mouth is the most remarkable feature in his face, the upper lip of Grecian shortness, and the corners descending, the lips full and finely-cut. In speaking he shows his teeth very much, and they are white and even, but I observed that even in his smile and he smiles frequently there is something of a scornful expression in his mouth that is evidently natural, and not, as many suppose, affected. . . . His countenance is full of expression, and changes with the subject of conversation; it gains on the beholder the more it is seen, and leaves an agreeable impression. . . . He is very slightly lame, and the deformity of his foot is so little remarkable that I am not now aware which foot it is. His voice and accent are peculiarly agreeable, but effeminate clear, harmonious, and so distinct that, though his general tone in speaking is rather low than high, not a word is lost I had expected to find him a dignified, cold, reserved, and haughty person, resembling those mysterious personages he so loves to paint in his works, and with whom he has been so often identified by the good-natured world, but nothing can be more different; for were I to point out the prominent defect of Lord Byron, I should say it was flippancy, and a total want of that natural self-possession and dignity which ought to characterize a man of birth and education." Such, judged by the social standard of his own country, was the look and personal manner of the greatest literary power of this century.

The best edition of Byron's works is that published by Murray, with illustrative extracts from his letters and diaries, and from the criticisms of his contemporaries. A selection from his works, edited and prefaced by Mr A. C. Swinburne, is published by Moxon. The facts of his life maybe studied in Moore's Life, Letters, and Journal of Lord Byron, supplemented by Leigh Hunt's Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, Lady Blessington's Conversations with Lord Byron, Trelawney's Recollections of Shelley and Byron, and the Countess Goiiccioli's Lord Byron juge par les temoins de sa vie (translated under the title of Recollections of Lord Byron}. Numerous allusions to Byron occur in the published memoirs of his contemporaries, such as the Shelley Memorials and Crabb Robinson's Diary. Karl Elze's biography (translated), although often mistaken in its conception of his character, is valuable as a collection of facts.

 BYRON, (1723-1786), admiral and circumnavigator, second son of the fourth Lord Byron, and grandfather of the poet, was born November 8, 1723. While still very young accompanied Anson in his voyage of discovery round the world. During many successive years he saw a great deal of hard service, and so constantly had he to contend, on his various expeditions, with adverse gales and dangerous storms, that he was aptly nicknamed by the sailors "Foul-weather Jack." It is to this that Lord Byron alludes in his famous Epistle to Augusta:—

In 1769 he was appointed governor of Newfoundland. In 1775 he attained his flag rank, and in the following year became a vice-admiral. In 1778 he was despatched with a fleet to watch the movements of the Count d'Estaing, and in July 1779 fought an indecisive engagement with him off Grenada. He soon after returned to England, retiring into private life, and died April 10, 1786.  BYSTRÖM, (1783-1848), Swedish sculptor, was born December 18, 1783, at Philipstad. At the age of twenty he proceeded to Stockholm and studied for three years under Sergell. In 1809 he gained the academy prize, and in the following year visited Rome. He sent home a beautiful work, The Reclining Bacchante, in half-life size, which raised him at once to the first rank among Swedish sculptors. Oh his return to Stockholm in 1816 he presented the crown prince with a colossal statue of himself, and was entrusted with several important works. Although he was appointed professor of sculpture at the academy, he soon returned to Italy, and with the exception of the years from 1838 to 1844 continued to reside there. He died at Rome in 1848. Among Bystrom's numerous productions the best are his representations of the female form, such as Hebe, Pandora, Juno suckling Hercules, and the Girl entering the Bath. His colossal statues of the Swedish kings are also much admired.  BYZANTINE EMPIRE. See.  BYZANTINE HISTORIANS. The historians who have related the transactions under the,, or , for the millennium intervening between the death of Theodosius and the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, are collectively classed together under the above designation. Until, however, the, they are, with one conspicuous exception, too merely fragmentary to deserve special notice. This exception is, the Polybius of his age, whose histories are of such importance as to demand a. We shall arrange his successors in chronological order, distinguishing between the historians properly so called and the chronologers.

.—I. of Myrina in Ætolia, was born under Justinian, about, and is believed to have died under Tiberius the Second, about. His character as an epigrammatist and an editor of poetry has been already considered under the head. We are indebted to him in his historical capacity for an extremely valuable narrative of six of the most eventful years of the, –. The first book details the conquest of Italy from the Goths by Justinian's general Narses; the remainder describe, along with other incidents, the Persian war of –, the two great earthquakes of and , the great plague, the rebuilding of StSophia, and Belisarius's last exploits against the Bulgarians. The history terminates abruptly, and was probably left unfinished. As a narrator, Agathias is sensible and impartial, but deficient in general knowledge, and far below the standard of a philosophic historian. His style is rhetorical, but not unpleasing. II. , the far inferior imitator of Agathias, lived under Mauricius, whose reign began in, and continued the history of Agathias to the date of the accession of that emperor. His work was comprised in eight books, which are entirely lost, with the exception of numerous extracts relating to embassies preserved in the collection Περὶ πρεσβειῶν—the 27th and only existing book of the extensive compilation of historical excerpts made by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus.