exhibiting remarkable shrewdness in reference to the affairs of his household.  In February, 1812, he again declares to Hodgson his resolve to leave England for ever, and fix himself in “one of the fairest islands of the East.”  On the 27th he made in the House of Lords his speech on a Bill to introduce special penalties against the frame-breakers of Nottingham.  This effort, on which he received many compliments, led among other results to a friendly correspondence with Lord Holland.  On April 21st of the same year, he again addressed the House on behalf of Roman Catholic Emancipation; and in June, 1813, in favour of Major Cartwright’s petition.  On all these occasions, as afterwards on the continent, Byron espoused the Liberal side of politics.  But his role was that of Manlius or Caesar, and he never fails to remind us that he himself was for the people, not of them.  His latter speeches, owing partly to his delivery, blamed as too Asiatic, were less successful.  To a reader the three seem much on the same level.  They are clever, but evidently set performances, and leave us no ground to suppose that the poet’s abandonment of a parliamentary career was a serious loss to the nation.

On the 29th of February the first and second cantos of Childe Harold appeared.  An early copy was sent to Mrs. Leigh, with the inscription:  “To Augusta, my dearest sister and my best friend, who has ever loved me much better than I deserved, this volume is presented by her father’s son and most affectionate brother, B.”  The book ran through seven editions in four weeks.  The effect of the first edition of Burns, and the sale of Scott’s Lays, are the only parallels in modern poetic literature to this success.  All eyes were suddenly fastened on the author, who let his satire sleep, and threw politics aside, to be the romancer of his day and for two years the darling of society.  Previous to the publition, Mr. Moore confesses to have gratified his lordship with the expression of the fear that Childe Harold was too good for the age.  Its success was due to the reverse being the truth.  It was just on the level of its age.  Its flowing verse, defaced by rhymical faults perceptible only to finer ears, its prevailing sentiment, occasional boldness relieved by pleasing platitudes, its half affected rakishness, here and there elevated by a rush as of morning air, and its frequent richness—­not yet, as afterwards, splendour—­of description, were all appreciated by the fashionable London of the Regency; while the comparatively mild satire, not keen enough to scarify, only gave a more piquant flavour to the whole.  Byron’s genius, yet in the green leaf, was not too far above the clever masses of pleasure-loving manhood by which it was surrounded.  It was natural that the address on the reopening of Drury Lane theatre should be written by “the world’s new joy”—­the first great English poet-peer; as natural as that in his only published satire of the period he should inveigh against