The result of Byron’s travels was seen in the first two cantos of “Childe Harold,” showing alike the fertility of his mind and the aspirations of a lofty genius.  These were published in 1812, soon after his return to England, at the age of twenty-four.  They took England by storm, creating both surprise and admiration.  Public curiosity and enthusiasm for the young poet, who had mounted to the front ranks of literature at a single leap, was unbounded and universal.  As he himself wrote:  “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”

Young Byron was now sought, courted, and adored, especially by ladies of the highest rank.  Everybody was desirous to catch even a glimpse of the greatest poet that had appeared since Pope and Dryden; any palace or drawing-room he desired to enter was open to him.  He was surfeited with roses and praises and incense.  He alone took precedence over Scott and Coleridge and Moore and Campbell.  For a time his pre-eminence in literature was generally conceded.  He was the foremost man of letters of his day, and the greatest popular idol.  His rank added to his eclat, since not many noblemen were distinguished for genius or literary excellence.  His singular beauty of face and person, despite his slight lameness, attracted the admiring gaze of women.  What Abelard was in the schools of philosophy, Byron was in the drawing-rooms of London.  People forgot his antecedents, so far as they were known, in the intoxication of universal admiration and unbounded worship of genius.  No poet in English history was ever seated on a prouder throne, and no heathen deity was ever more indifferent than he to the incense of idolaters.

Far be it from me to attempt an analysis of the merits of the poem with which the fame of Byron will be forever identified.  Its great merits are universally conceded; and while it has defects,—­great inequalities in both style and matter; some stanzas supernal in beauty, and others only mediocre,—­on the whole, the poem is extraordinary.  Byron adopted the Spenserian measure,—­perhaps the most difficult of all measures, hard even to read aloud,—­in which blank verse seems to blend with rhyme.  It might be either to the ear, though to the eye it is elaborate rhyme,—­such as would severely task a made poet, but which this born poet seems to have thrown off without labor.  The leading peculiarity of the poem is description,—­of men and places; of the sea, the mountain, and the river; of Nature in her loveliness and mysteries; of cities and battle-fields consecrated by the heroism of brave and gifted men, in Greece, in Rome, in mediaeval Europe,—­with swift passing glances at salient points in history, showing extensive reading and deep meditation.