Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/880

BYR 1763; educated at Merchant Taylors' school, London, from which, at the age of sixteen, he was sent; to Trinity college, Cambridge. While yet an undergraduate he published a pastoral poem, then greatly admired, and two letters on Dreams in the Spectator, under the name of John Shadow. In 1714 he became a fellow of his college, but within two years had to resign his fellowship, not having taken holy orders as the rule under which it was held required. He married a cousin; his father and hers both had money, but they would not give a shilling to the adventurous pair. Byrom passed the winters of each year in London, earning his support by teaching short-hand, while his family resided in Manchester. The system which he employed, and of which he was himself the inventor, is still found useful. He did what he could to keep the principle a secret. This was of course impossible, and an account of it is given in Rees' Cyclopædia. One of his pupils was Lord Chesterfield. In 1774 Byrom was elected fellow of the Royal Society. The death of a brother gave Byrom some property, and the evening of his life was passed in the house where he was born. Through his whole life he had the habit of throwing his thoughts into verse. It would seem that he almost thought in rhyme. In his verses there is a total absence of anything like poetry, but the style is pleasant and conversational, and one cannot read his volumes without feeling that he was a good and an amiable man. After his death such of his poems as could be collected were published. He had destroyed many during his last illness. Byrom, after resigning his fellowship, thought to have educated himself for the medical profession, and was, on this account, by his friends called Doctor. Some of Byrom's smaller poems have been ascribed to others, among them an epigram on Handel and Bononcini, to Swift, in whose works it is often printed. A journal of Byrom's, together with a great many letters to and from him, have been found in the houses where he resided in Manchester and at Kersall. Two volumes of these "Remains" have been printed by the Chetham Society, edited by the Rev. Dr. Parkinson, principal of St. Bees' college. The journal, so far as published, goes down to the year 1785. More volumes are promised.—J. A., D.  BYRON,, Lord Byron of Rochdale, Lancashire, born in Holies Street, London, January 22d, 1788; descended from the Scandinavian Bürüns, one branch of which settled in Normandy, and came over to England with William the Conqueror. Another branch had migrated to Livonia, producing there the formidable Marshal de Buren, so notorious through the absolute power which he had grasped, and for a time wielded in Russia. Thus,—were one to repose confidently on the influence of race,—it would not be difficult to find in such antecedents the necessary ground of daring and tameless will as regards the subject of our memoir, but causes abundantly adequate to influence him in a similar direction, in so far as he could be influenced from without, form a main part of the story of his own brief life.—His mother. Miss Gordon of Gight, a Scotch heiress, was the second wife of the poet's father, Captain Byron. By a former marriage with Lady Carmarthen, Captain Byron had one daughter, the Honourable Augusta Byron, afterwards Mrs. Leigh. Between this sister and Lord Byron a most tender and enduring affection existed. Captain Byron and his wife lived unhappily together, and were soon separated. Mrs. Byron's fortune being entirely swallowed up by her husband's debts, she found herself, in two years after her marriage, possessed of only £150 per annum. She retired to Aberdeen, and her son, when nearly five years old, was sent to a day school there for one year, and afterwards to the school of a Mr. Ross, whose kindness he always remembered with gratitude. As soon as he was able to read, "his grand passion was Roman history." From Mr. Ross's he went to the Aberdeen grammar school. His schoolfellows agree in describing him as "a lively, warm-hearted, high-spirited boy, passionate and resentful, but affectionate and companionable: to a remarkable degree venturesome and fearless, and always more ready to give a blow than take one." He is also said to have been "more anxious to distinguish himself by prowess in all sports and exercises, than by advancement in learning." It belonged to Byron's nature to resolve to excel even in pursuits for which he seemed naturally the least fitted—a feature of character distinguishing him through life, and calling forth at once the greatness and much of the weakness of the man. His keen feeling, connected with the deformity of one of his feet (occasioned by an accident at his birth), a feeling that seldom left him—induced him to engage eagerly on every suitable opportunity in violent physical exercises, and it is well known how he triumphed in his success. The disadvantage in question he had early surmounted to a great extent by dint of stern determination, for his school-mates say that "he excelled at 'bases,' a game requiring considerable swiftness of foot." In 1796 Mrs. Byron took her son to the Highlands, and the wild grandeur of the scenery made an indelible impression on his mind, even at that tender age. His love of nature, so intense that in her presence "he lived not in himself, but he became portion of that around him," was here first developed. In after years he commemorates his old enthusiasm for mountain grandeur, and attributes some of the delight he experienced in the sublimity of Alpine and classical scenery, to the charm of Scotch memories:

Byron was an extremely sensitive and affectionate child. At the age of eight years, his attachment to his cousin, Mary Duff, seems to have deserved the name of love. In allusion to this he says somewhere—"I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards, yet my misery and my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt whether I have ever been really attached since." But this loving nature was rendered a source of suffering to him in childhood, by the violent unregulated temper of his mother, who, though she indulged him to excess, was subject to paroxysms of rage, in which she would throw the first missile that came to her hand at her son, and even call him "a lame brat." "He traced the first feelings of pain and humiliation he had ever known to the coldness with which his mother received his caresses in infancy, and the frequent taunts on his personal deformity, with which she had wounded him." The only gentle influence at work to relieve the harshness of these scenes, was that of his nurse, Mary Gray, whose kindness to him as a child he never forgot. "This woman, in common with all his nurses, tutors, &c., always spoke with tender remembrance of the mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness in his disposition, by which it was impossible not to be attached, and which rendered him then, as he was in his riper years, easily manageable by those who loved and understood him." In 1799 Mrs. Byron removed to London, and in 1800 she sent Byron to Harrow. Dr. Drury, head master of Harrow, says of him—"His manner and temper soon convinced me that he might be led by a silken string to a point, rather than by a cable." In 1803, while passing the vacation in Notts, Byron first saw Mary, daughter of Mr. Chaworth of Annesley. His unrequited love for her cast its shadow over his whole future life. One of his most beautiful and touching poems, the "Dream," describes its effects upon him, as no words but his own could do. Miss Chaworth, though aware of his attachment, understood neither the deep heart nor the genius of her youthful lover. He has spoken in his journal of the intense suffering he endured on overhearing Miss Chaworth say to her maid—"Do you think I could care anything for that lame boy?" and given a painful account of his rushing wildly out of the house at night, he knew not whither, "in an agony of humiliation and grief." In 1805 he went to Cambridge, and there formed many ardent friendships, even the memory of which, sixteen years afterwards, could bring tears into his eyes. In 1806 his first volume of poems was printed for private circulation. The first copy was presented by him to a friend, who expostulated with him on the licentiousness of one poem in the volume. Byron frankly admitted the justice of the censure, and at once cancelled the whole edition. The poems were published in 1807, and sold rapidly. In 1808 he spent the vacation in London, courted and lionized by the blasé London world, and leading the thoughtless dissipated life too common among those of his age and rank. His inner life, however, appears to have been distressingly lonely. The unreasonable violence of his mother's temper estranged him from her, and "he had not," says Mr. Moore, "a single friend or relative to whom he could look up with respect." Injudicious praise, and equally injudicious blame, were all he met with from the criticism of the day. In 1808, the criticism on his "Hours of Idleness," which appeared in the Edinburgh Review, first kindled the true fire of his genius. In 1809 he answered it by publishing the celebrated satire—"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." His coming of age was celebrated at Newstead Abbey early in the 