Byron lived much in his library, which was his solitary luxury.  In the revelry of the imagination his heart became cold.  “To follow poetry,” says Pope, “one must leave father and mother, and cleave to it alone,”—­as Dante and Petrarch and Milton did.  Not even Byron’s intense craving for affection could be satisfied when he was dwelling on the ideals which his imagination created, and which scarcely friendship could satisfy.  Even so good a man as Carlyle lived among his books rather than in the society of his wife, whom he really loved, and whose virtues and attainments he appreciated and admired.  An affectionate woman runs a great risk in marrying an absorbed and preoccupied man of genius, even if his character be reproachless.  Unfortunately, the character of Byron was anything but reproachless, and no one knew this better than his wife, which knowledge doubtless alienated what little affection she had for him.  He seems to have sought low company even after his marriage, and Lady Byron has intimated that she did not think him altogether sane.  Living with him as his wife was insupportable; but though she separated from him, she did not seek a divorce.

Byron would not have married at all if he had consulted his happiness, and still more his fame.  “In reviewing the great names of philosophy and science, we shall find that those who have most distinguished themselves have virtually admitted their own unfitness for the marriage tie by remaining in celibacy,—­Newton, Gassendi, Galileo, Descartes, Bayle, Locke, Leibnitz, Boyle, Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, and a host of others.”

The scandal which Byron’s separation from his wife created, and his known and open profligacy, at last shut him out from the society of which he had been so bright an ornament.  It is a peculiarity of the English people, which redounds to their honor, to exclude from public approbation any man, however gifted or famous, who has outraged the moral sense by open and ill-disguised violation of the laws of morality.  The cases of Dilke and Parnell in our own day are illustrations known to all.  What in France or Italy is condoned, is never pardoned or forgotten in England.  Not even a Voltaire, a Rousseau, or a Mirabeau, had they lived in England, could have been accepted by English society,—­much less a man who scorned and ridiculed it.  Even Byron—­for a few years the pet, the idol, and the glory of the country—­was not too high to fall.  To quote one of his own stanzas,—­

     “He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find
      The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
      He who surpasses or subdues mankind
      Must look down on the hate of those below. 
      Though high above the sun of glory glow,
      And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
      Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
      Contending tempests on his naked head.”