rise any one who knew the pair when, a year later,
they separated for ever.

The scandals and discussions connected with this event are fortunately
foreign to our subject here. The only important result of the matter for
literature is that Byron (upon whom public opinion in one of its sudden
fits of virtuous versatility threw even more of the blame than was
probably just) left the country and journeyed leisurely, in the company
of Mr. and Mrs. Shelley for the most part, to Venice. He never returned
alive to England; and Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Genoa were successively
his headquarters till 1823. Then the Greek Insurrection attracted him,
he raised what money he could, set out for Greece, showed in the
distracted counsels of the insurgents much more practical and
untheatrical heroism than he had hitherto been credited with, and died
of fever at Missolonghi on the 19th of April 1824. His body was brought
home to England and buried in the parish church of Hucknall Torkard,
near Newstead Abbey, his Nottinghamshire seat, which, however, he had
sold some time before. The best of Byron's poems by far date from this
latter period of his life: the later cantos of _Childe Harold_, the
beautiful short poems of _The Dream_ and _Darkness_, many pieces in
dramatic form (the chief of which are _Manfred_, _Cain_, _Marino
Faliero_, and _Sardanapalus_), _Mazeppa_, a piece more in his earlier
style but greatly superior to his earlier work, a short burlesque poem
_Beppo_, and an immense and at his death unfinished narrative satire
entitled _Don Juan_.

Although opinions about Byron differ very much, there is one point about
him which does not admit of difference of opinion. No English poet,
perhaps no English writer except Scott (or rather "The Author of
Waverley"), has ever equalled him in popularity at home; and no English
writer, with Richardson and Scott again as seconds, and those not very
close ones, has equalled him in contemporary popularity abroad. The
vogue of Byron in England, though overpowering for the moment, was even
at its height resisted by some good judges and more strait-laced
moralists; and it ebbed, if not as rapidly as it flowed, with a much
more enduring movement. But abroad he simply took possession of the
Continent of Europe and kept it. He was one of the dominant influences
and determining causes of the French Romantic movement; in Germany,
though the failure of literary talent and activity of the first order i