7: Letter 436, Moore.]

CHAPTER XXII.

LORD BYRON'S MARRIAGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Lord Byron's marriage exercised such a deplorable influence over his
destiny, that it is impossible to speak of it succinctly, and without
entering into details; for this one great misfortune proved the fruitful
source of all others.

If we were permitted to believe that Providence sometimes abandons men
here below to the influence of an evil genius, we might well conceive
this baneful intervention in the case of Lord Byron's conjugal union,
and all the circumstances that led to it.

It was but a few months after having returned from his travels in the
East, that Lord Byron published his first cantos of "Childe Harold," and
obtained triumphs as an orator in the House of Lords. Presenting himself
thus for the first time to the public, surrounded by all the prestige
belonging to a handsome person, rank, and youth,--in a word, with such
an assemblage of qualities as are seldom if ever found united in one
person--he immediately became the idol of England. The enemies created
by his boyish satire, and augmented by the jealousy his success could
not fail to cause, now hid themselves like those vile insects that slink
back into their holes on the first appearance of the sun's rays, ready
to creep out again when fogs and darkness return. Living then in the
midst of the great world, in the closest intimacy with many of the fair
sex, and witnessing the small amount of wedded happiness enjoyed by
aristocratic couples within his observation, intending also to wing his
flight eventually toward climes more in unison with his tastes, he no
longer felt that attraction for marriage which he had experienced in
boyhood (like most youths), and he said, quite seriously, that if his
cousin, George Byron, would marry, he, on his part, would willingly
engage not to enter into wedlock. But his friends saw with regret that
his eyes were still seeking through English clouds the blue skies of the
East; and that he was kept in perpetual agitation by the fair ones who
would cast themselves athwart his path, throwing themselves at his head
when not at his feet. Vainly did he distort himself, give himself out to
the public as a true "Childe Harold," malign himself; his friends knew
that his heart was overflowing with tenderness, and they could not thus
be duped. If he had wished to cull some flowers idly, for the sake of
scattering their leaves to the bree