II.—­The Poet Finds Himself

Lord Byron was absent from England for two years, and in the solitude of his nights at sea and in his lone wanderings through Greece he had leisure and seclusion to look within himself, and there catch the first glimpses of his glorious mind.  His deep passion for solitude grew to full power; the varied excitement of his travels invigorated his character and stored his imagination with impressions, and his inborn sadness rose from a querulous bitterness to the grandeur of his later melancholy.

His letters show him on Parnassus, where a flight of eagles seemed an omen of his destiny; at Athens, where he lodged with the mother of the “Maid of Athens”; standing among the ruins of Ephesus and the mounds of Troy; swimming the Hellespont in honour of Leander; at Constantinople, where the prospect of the Golden Horn seemed the fairest of all; at Patras, in the woeful debility of fever; and again at Athens, making acquaintance with Lady Hester Stanhope and “Abyssinian” Bruce.  Through all these varied scenes his mind was brooding on the verses of the “Childe Harold.”

On Byron’s return to England, in July, 1811, that poem was placed in Mr. Murray’s hands, and thus was laid the foundation of a long connection between author and publisher.  Mrs. Byron died on August 1.  With all her faults she had loved her son deeply, and he could at least look back upon dutiful and kindly behaviour to her.  It was in November that I first had the pleasure of meeting the poet at dinner, and what I chiefly remarked was the nobleness of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his voice and manner, and his marked kindness.  From our first meeting our acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship.

On February 27, 1812, a day or two before the appearance of “Childe Harold,” Byron made the first trial of his eloquence in the House of Lords, and it was on this occasion that he made the acquaintance of Lord Holland.  The subject of debate was the Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill.  Workmen were rioting and wrecking because their labour had been displaced by the introduction of machinery, and Byron’s view was that “we must not allow mankind to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism”—­“the maintenance of the industrious poor is of greater consequence than the enrichment of monopolists”—­“I have seen the state of these miserable men, and it is a disgrace to a civilised country.”  The speech was well received.  The impression produced two days later by Byron’s “Childe Harold” was as instantaneous as it has proved deep and lasting.  Even the dashes of scepticism, with which he darkened his strain, served only to heighten its success.  The Prince Regent had the poet presented to him, and the author of “Marmion” offered his praise.  In the following May appeared the wild and beautiful fragment, “The Giaour.”  This new offspring of his genius was hailed with wonder and delight, and on my rejoining him in town this spring, I found an intense enthusiasm for Byron throughout the literary and social world.  But his mind was already turning to freedom and solitude, and his third and last speech in the House of Lords was made in June.