Embarrassed in his circumstances; filled with disgust, mortification, and shame; excluded from the proudest circles,—­Byron now resolved to leave England forever, and bury himself in such foreign lands as were most congenial to his tastes and habits.  But for his immorality he might still have shined at an exalted height; for he had not yet written anything which shocked the practical English mind.  The worst he had written was bitter satire, yet not more bitter than that of Swift or Pope.  No defiance, no blasphemous sentiments, or what seemed to many to be such, had yet escaped him.  His “Corsair” and his “Bride of Abydos” appeared soon after the “Childe Harold,” and added to his fame by their exquisite melody of rhyme and sentimental admiration for Oriental life,—­though even these were tinged with that abandon which afterwards made his latter poems a scandal and reproach.  “The disappointment of youthful passion, the lassitude and remorse of premature excess, the lone friendlessness of his life,” and, I may add, the reproaches of society, induced him to fly from the scene of his brilliant successes, filled with blended sentiments of scorn, hatred, defiance, and despair.

In the Spring of 1816, at the age of twenty-eight, Byron left England forever,—­a voluntary exile on the face of the earth, saddened, embittered, and disappointed.  It was to Italy that he turned his steps, passing through Brussels and Flanders, lingering on the Rhine, enamored with its ruined castles, still more with Nature, and making a long stay in Switzerland.  Here he visited the Castle of Chillon, all the spots made memorable by the abodes of Rousseau, Gibbon, and Madame de Stael, and all the most interesting scenery of the Bernese Alps,—­Lake Leman, Interlaken, Thun, the Jungfrau, the glaciers, Brientz, Chamouni, Berne, and on to Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of Shelley and his wife.  The Shelleys he found most congenial, and stayed with them some time.  While in the neighborhood of Geneva he produced the third canto of “Childe Harold,” “The Prisoner of Chillon,” “A Dream,” and other things.  In October, he passed on to Milan, Verona, and Venice; and in this latter city he took up his residence.

Oh that we could blot out Byron’s life in Venice, made up of love adventures and dissipation and utter abandonment to those pleasures that appealed to his lower nature, as if he were possessed by a demon, utterly reckless of his health, his character, and his fame!  Venice was then the most immoral city in Italy, given over to idleness and pleasure.  It was here that Byron’s contempt for woman became fixed, seeing only her weaknesses and follies; and it was this contempt of woman which intensified the abhorrence in which his character was generally held, in the most respectable circles in England.  Even in distant Venice his baleful light was not under a bushel, and the scandals of his life extended far and wide,—­especially that in reference to Margherita Cogni, an illiterate virago who could neither read nor write, and whom he was finally compelled to discard on account of the violence of her temper, after living with her in the most open manner.