Lord Byron: A man of action, the Romantic Hero

George Gordon, Lord Byron was born on 22 January 1788. His mother Catherine came from the
lawless line of Scottish Gordons, and his father, John Byron, of even worse reputation, had run
through his wifes fortune and was hiding in France. Byrons father died in 1791, and on the
death of his great-uncle in 1798, Byron inherited the title, the ancestral home of Newstead, and a
complicated financial situation.
As Newstead was by then uninhabitable, he and his mother lived in Nottingham, but Byron paid
visits to the property, where he fell in love a neighbor and cousin, an infatuation not returned.
Byron was small for his age and suffered a deformity of the foot, causing him to limp, and to be
bullied at school: Dulwich and then Harrow. He enrolled at Cambridge, did little work, kept a
bear in his rooms, and ran up more debts.
In June 1809, Byron, with friends John Cam Hobhouse and William Fletcher, set off on the
customary grand tour, which included Europe and some parts of the middle east. He had already
published verse, and the latest adventures provided material for Childe Harolds Pilgrimage,
which he worked on for next eight years. On his homecoming Byron found his mother had died
and his half-sister Augusta unhappily married. But in 1812 he was persuaded to publish the first
two Cantos of Childe Harold, and became an overnight sensation.
Women flocked to him, and Byron embarked on a string of affairs, probably with Augusta too.
Eventually, in 1815, he married Annabella Milbanke, but the marriage soon broke down, and
London society turned against him. Once again, Byron set off for Europe, where he met Shelley
and ended up in Venice. There his open affair with Countess Guicioli caused more scandal, not
helped by Byrons involvement with republican politics. Shelley drowned in 1822 and Byron
took up the cause of Greek Independence, sailing for Greece the following year. Byron took
charge of the movement, financing a Greek navy, but his health was now poor. In 1824 he
suffered an epileptic seizure, and two months later caught a severe chill. He died on 19 April
1824, unaware that the tide had turned in England, and that he was again a celebrated figure.
Byrons first poems appeared in 1806, Fugitive Pieces: pleasant enough but attacked for the
writers affectations. Byron counter-attacked with some effective satire: English Bards and
Scotch Reviewers, but wrote little more until his return from Europe. Childe Harolds
Pilgrimage, a discursive travelogue in Spenserian stanzas, made his name. Byron eventually
finished the poem in Venice, where he also wrote Manfred, The Prisoner Of Chillon, Lament Of
Tasso, Beppo, Mazeppa, several slight but well-loved lyrics (So well go no more a-roving, She
walks in beauty, like the night, When we two parted), and started on Don Juan. The last, worked
on in fits and starts, and unfinished at his death, is Byrons epitaph, the greatest satire/mock epic
in the English language, looser in form and technique that Popes verse (which Byron greatly
admired) but with wonderful brio and boisterous fun. Its quotable lines would make a small
book. The book was published in installments and anonymously in London, where its politics,
amorality and outspokenness caused much trouble. Yet Don Juan also contained passages of
great beauty, a deeply sensitive portrayal of women, and unvarnished realism.

Byrons frankness was not welcome to the Victorians, and his colloquial language held little
interest to the Modernists (Auden excepted). But Byron had lived the life he describes, and that
honesty and fearless republicanism made him immensely influential on the continent, where his
portrayal of the troubled Romantic hero still accords him a place among the greatest of English
poets.
The English Romantics, who broke with the tight forms and propriety of Augustan verse, were a
varied lot. As men of action (Byron), solitude (Wordsworth), high flown imagination
(Coleridge), impractical dreams (Shelley), visionary illumination (Blake) and much more
besides, the Romantics had sensitive if unstable personalities alive to the currents of the age.
Most were republican, sympathetic to the better aims of the French Revolution, and to periodic
struggles for freedom in Europe. Return to nature meant not barbarism but simplicity. Sensibility
was not a product of cultivation but an intense expression of mans passionate nature. The
unique, individual and spontaneous were more valuable than that which conformed to any
intellectualized canon of taste. The sense of the dark and hidden, the feeling of dependence and
awe, and a worshipful acceptance of the fullness of being, are the attitudes which put religious
man in touch with the Divine. The Romantics therefore took more interest in nature and her
moods, in far-off places and primitive peoples, imagination, spontaneity, natural religion and
individual talent.
Byrons adventurous life his love affairs, travels, advocacy of Greek Independence make
an entertaining entry into early nineteenth century life: the freebooting ways of the English
aristocracy before Victorian morals took hold, the Napoleonic wars, Venice in the last years of
her splendour, rebellion in the decaying Ottoman Empire, the frequent struggles for freedom in
Europe, Russia and Latin America. A fascinating period is packed with larger-than-life
characters. Even poets caught some of the fervour: Wordsworths affair with Annette Vallon,
Shelleys utopian outpourings, Keats tragic life, Blakes visions.
Good books include L. Marchands Byrons Poetry: A Critical Introduction (1965), M.K.
Josephs Byron the Poet (1964), E.F. Boyds Byrons Don Juan: A Critical Study (1945), R.
Escarpits Lord Byron, Un Temprament Littraire (1957), W.H. Marshalls The Structure of
Byrons Major Poems (1962), P.G. Thorslevs The Byronic Hero (1962), J.R. Jacksons Poetry of
the Romantic Period (1980), S. Currans Poetic Form and British Romanticism (1986) and H.
Fischers Romantic Verse Narrative (1991).