The Poetical Works of Lord Byron: With Memoir and Notes (Classic Reprint)Excerpt from The Poetical Works of Lord Byron: With Memoir and Notes George gordon lord byron was descended of a very ancient and illustrious family. The celebrated Commodore Byron, an account of whose shipwrecks once delighted so much the readers of adventures, was his grandfather. His father was Captain Byron, an extravagant and licentious man, who, after squander ing his own fortune, married Miss Gordon Of Gight, in Aberdeen shire, and got with her not only the property to which she was heiress, but a considerable sum of money, all of which he soon spent. The poet was born in London on the 22d of January, 1788, two years after which his mother, in consequence of the death of her husband, left England, and took up her residence at Aberdeen-a place suited to her now scanty resources, which were not supplemented by her husband's uncle, the then Lord Byron, a retired and gloomy man, of an ungenerous spirit. For eight years the poet resided with his mother; and here began that treatment which, acting on a generous but irritable mind, laid the foundation of a character marked by so many virtues, and so many offences against good taste and public morals. His mother, whose life had been soured by the extrava gant conduct of her husband, acted towards the boy - who was not only of a weak bodily habit, but deformed in one, if not both, of his feet - as if she had predetermined to make his moral nature of that anomalous character it afterwards exhibited, the means she employed being indulgence, not always deserved, and severity, as seldom merited. These cherished his natural hasti ness Of temper, as well as pampered his proud wilfulness, until the one hastened to irascibility, and the other to a selfish defiance of every one about him. All the good tendencies of his fine nature were thus weakened and misdirected, and all the bad ones were aggravated and deepened. To this was added a constant change of teachers, as well as methods of teaching, without ref erence to the abilities or inclinations of the boy, and the couse quence resulted in an almost absolute indifference to all studies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. |
