Project Gutenberg's A Day with Lord Byron, by May Clarissa Gillington

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: A Day with Lord Byron

Author: May Clarissa Gillington

Release Date: June 27, 2010 [EBook #32990]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAY WITH LORD BYRON ***

Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Canada
Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

[Illustration: A Day with Byron]

[Illustration]

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.

"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies."
(_Hebrew Melodies._)

A DAY WITH LORD BYRON

_by_

M.C.
GILLINGTON

LONDON
HODDER & STOUGHTON

_In the same Series._

_Longfellow._
_Tennyson._
_Keats._
_Browning._
_Wordsworth._
_Burns._
_Scott._
_Shelley._

A DAY WITH BYRON.

One February afternoon in the year 1822, about two o'clock,--for this
is the hour at which his day begins,--"the most notorious personality
of his century" arouses himself, in the Palazzo Lanfranchi at Pisa.
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron, languidly arises and dresses, with the
assistance of his devoted valet Fletcher. Invariably he awakes in very
low spirits, "in actual despair and despondency," he has termed it: this
is in part constitutional, and partly, no doubt, a reaction after the
feverish brain-work of the previous night. It is, at any rate, in
unutterable melancholy and _ennui_ that he surveys in the mirror that
slight and graceful form, which had been idolised by London drawing-rooms,
and that pale, scornful, beautiful face, "like a spirit, good or evil,"
which the enthusiastic Walter Scott has termed a thing to dream of. He
notes the grey streaks already visible among his dark brown locks, and
mutters his own lines miserably to himself,--

Through life's dull road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragg'd to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me?
Nothing--except thirty-three.

An innumerable motley crowd of re