the poet and his friend Hobhouse started for Falmouth, on their way
"_outre mer_."

CHAPTER IV.

TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL.

There is no romance of Munchausen or Dumas more marvellous than the
adventures attributed to Lord Byron abroad. Attached to his first
expedition are a series of narratives, by professing eye-witnesses, of his
intrigues, encounters, acts of diablerie and of munificence, in particular
of his roaming about the isles of Greece and taking possession of one of
them, which have all the same relation to reality as the _Arabian Nights_
to the actual reign of Haroun Al Raschid.[1]

[Footnote 1: Those who wish to read them are referred to the three
large volumes--published in 1825, by Mr. Iley, Portman Street--of
anonymous authorship.]

Byron had far more than an average share of the _emigre_ spirit, the
counterpoise in the English race of their otherwise arrogant isolation. He
held with Wilhelm Meister--

To give space for wandering is it,
That the earth was made so wide.

and wrote to his mother from Athens: "I am so convinced of the advantages
of looking at mankind, instead of reading about them, and the bitter
effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an islander,
that I think there should be a law amongst us to send our young men abroad
for a term, among the few allies our wars have left us."

On June 11th, having borrowed money at heavy interest, and stored his mind
with information about Persia and India, the contemplated but unattained
goal of his travels, he left London, accompanied by his friend Hobhouse,
Fletcher his valet, Joe Murray his old butler, and Robert Rushton the son
of one of his tenants, supposed to be represented by the Page in _Childe
Harold_. The two latter, the one on account of his age, the other from his
health breaking down, he sent back to England from Gibraltar.

Becalmed for some days at Falmouth, a town which he describes as "full of
Quakers and salt fish," he despatched letters to his mother, Drury, and
Hodgson, exhibiting the changing moods of his mind. Smarting under a
slight he had received at parting from a school-companion, who had excused
himself from a farewell meeting on the plea that he had to go shopping, he
at one moment talks of his desolation, and says that, "leaving England
without regret," he has thought of entering the Turkish service; in the
next, especially in the stanzas to Hodgson, he runs off into a stra