the poet writes, in a trenchant survey of the circumstances, in August, 1819, “the public formed their opinion, I am not aware; but it was general, and it was decisive.  Of me and of mine they knew little, except that I had written poetry, was a nobleman, bad married, became a father, and was involved in differences with my wife and her relatives—­no one knew why, because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances.

“The press was active and scurrilous;.. my name—­which had been a knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman—­was tainted.  I felt that, if what was whispered and muttered and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me.  I withdrew; but this was not enough.  In other countries—­in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes—­I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight.  I crossed the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes himself to the waters.”

On the 16th of April, 1816, shortly before his departure, he wrote to Mr. Rogers:  “My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow.  We shall not meet again for some time, at all events, if ever (it was their final meeting), and under these circumstances I trust to stand excused to you and Mr. Sheridan for being unable to wait upon him this evening.”  In all this storm and stress, Byron’s one refuge was in the affection which rises like a well of purity amid the passions of his turbid life.

  In the desert a fountain is springing,
    In the wild waste there still is a tree;
  And a bird in the solitude singing,
    That speaks to my spirit of thee.

The fashionable world was tired of its spoilt child, and he of it.  Hunted out of the country, bankrupt in purse and heart, he left it, never to return; but he left it to find fresh inspiration by the “rushing of the arrowy Rhone,” and under Italian skies to write the works which have immortalized his name.

DESCENT OF LADY BYRON AND LADY C. LAMB

Earl Spencer.                Sir Ralph Milbanke.         Viscount Wentworth
|                 _________________|_______________           |
|                 |                                |          |
Henrietta         Elizabeth (Lady Melbourne)   Sir Ralph + Judith Noel
Frances.            | m.  Viscount Melbourne.             |
+                 |                                    |
F. Ponsonby         |                   Lord Byron + Anna Isabella. 
(Earl of            |                              |
Bessborough).       |                          Augusta Ada.
|                 |
|                 |
Lady Caroline + William Lamb.

DESCENT OF ALLEGRA

William Godwin. 
Married 1st + Mary Woolstonecraft. 2nd Mrs. Clairmont.
| She had by previous |
| alliance |
| | Claire Claremont + Byron. 
P. B. Shelley + Mary Godwin Fanny Imlay. |
Allegra.