When his satire was ready for the press, he carried it with him to London.  He was then just come of age, or about to be so; and one of his objects in this visit to the metropolis was, to take his seat in the House of Lords before going abroad; but, in advancing to this proud distinction, so soothing to the self-importance of youth, he was destined to suffer a mortification which probably wounded him as deeply as the sarcasms of the Edinburgh Review.  Before the meeting of Parliament, he wrote to his relation and guardian, the Earl of Carlisle, to remind him that he should be of age at the commencement of the Session, in the natural hope that his Lordship would make an offer to introduce him to the House:  but he was disappointed.  He only received a formal reply, acquainting him with the technical mode of proceeding, and the etiquette to be observed on such occasions.  It is therefore not wonderful that he should have resented such treatment; and he avenged it by those lines in his satire, for which he afterwards expressed his regret in the third canto of Childe Harold.

Deserted by his guardian at a crisis so interesting, he was prevented for some time from taking his seat in Parliament; being obliged to procure affidavits in proof of his grandfather’s marriage with Miss Trevannion, which having taken place in a private chapel at Carhais, no regular certificate of the ceremony could be produced.  At length, all the necessary evidence having been obtained, on the 13th of March, 1809, he presented himself in the House of Lords alone—­a proceeding consonant to his character, for he was not so friendless nor unknown, but that he might have procured some peer to have gone with him.  It, however, served to make his introduction remarkable.

On entering the House, he is described to have appeared abashed and pale:  he passed the woolsack without looking round, and advanced to the table where the proper officer was attending to administer the oaths.  When he had gone through them, the chancellor quitted his seat, and went towards him with a smile, putting out his hand in a friendly manner to welcome him, but he made a stiff bow, and only touched with the tip of his fingers the chancellor’s hand, who immediately returned to his seat.  Such is the account given of this important incident by Mr Dallas, who went with him to the bar; but a characteristic circumstance is wanting.  When Lord Eldon advanced with the cordiality described, he expressed with becoming courtesy his regret that the rules of the House had obliged him to call for the evidence of his grandfather’s marriage.—­“Your Lordship has done your duty, and no more,” was the cold reply, in the words of Tom Thumb, and which probably was the cause of the marked manner of the chancellor’s cool return to his seat.

The satire was published anonymously, and immediately attracted attention; the sale was rapid, and a new edition being called for, Byron revised it.  The preparations for his travels being completed, he then embarked in July of the same year, with Mr Hobhouse, for Lisbon, and thence proceeded by the southern provinces of Spain to Gibraltar.