Sir Walter Scott ceased to write Metrical Romances, he said it was because Byron had beaten him. But the metrical romances of these two poets are widely different. With Sir Walter we are up among the hills, out on the wide moorland. With him we tramp the heather, and ford the rushing streams; his poems are full of healthy, generous life. With Byron we seem rather to be in the close air of a theater. His poems do not tell of a rough and vigorous life, but of luxury and softness; of tyrants and slaves, of beautiful houris and dreadful villains. And in the villains we always seem to see Byron himself, who tries to impress us with the fact that he is indeed a very "bold, bad man." In his poetry there is something artificial, which takes us backward to the time of Pope, rather than forward with the nature poets.

The boyhood of George Gordon Byron was a sad one. He came of an ancient and noble family, but one which in its later generations had become feeble almost to madness. His father, who was called Mad Jack, was wild and worthless, his mother was a wealthy woman, but weak and passionate, and in a short time after her marriage her husband spent nearly all her money. Mrs. Byron then took her little baby and went to live quietly in Aberdeen on what was left of her fortune.

She was a weak and passionate woman, and sometimes she petted and spoiled her little boy, sometimes she treated him cruelly, calling him "a lame brat," than which nothing could hurt him more, for poor little George was born lame, and all his life long he felt sore and angry about it. To him too had been given the passionate temper of both father and mother, and when he was angry he would fall into "silent rages," bite pieces out of saucers, or tear his pinafores to bits.

Meanwhile, while in Aberdeen Mrs. Byron struggled to live on 130 pounds a year, in Newstead Abbey, near Nottingham, there lived a queer, half-mad, old grand-uncle, who had earned for himself the name of "the wicked lord." He knew well enough that when he died the little boy in Aberdeen, with the pretty face and lame foot, would become Lord Byron. He might have taken some interest in his nephew, and seen at least that he was sent to school, and given an education to fit him for his future place in the world. But that was not "the wicked lord's" way. He paid no attention to the little boy in Aberdeen. Indeed, it is said that he hated him, and that he cut down his trees and despoiled Newstead as much as he could, in order to leave his heir as poor a heritage as possible.

But when George was ten this old uncle died. Then mother and son said good-by to Aberdeen, and at length traveled southwards to take possession of their great house and broad lands. But the heritage was not so great as at first sight would appear, for the house was so ruinous that it was scarcely fit to live in, and the wicked lord had sold some of the land. However, as the sale was unlawful, after much trouble the land was recovered.

Byron had now to take his place among boys of his own class, and when he was thirteen he was sent to school at Harrow. But he hated school. He was shy as "a wild mountain colt" and somewhat snobbish, and at first was most unpopular.

As he says himself, however, he "fought his way very fairly" and he formed some friendships, passionately, as he did everything. In spite of his lameness, he was good at sports, especially at swimming. He was brave, and even if his snobbishness earned for him the nickname of the "Old English Baron," his comrades admired his spirit, and in the end, instead of being unpopular, he led—often to mischief. "I was," he says, "always cricketing— rebelling—fighting, rowing (from row, not boat-rowing, a different practice), and in all manner of mischiefs." Yet, wild though he was, of his headmaster he ever kept a kindly remembrance. "Dr. Drury," he says, "whom I plagued sufficiently too, was the best, the kindest friend I ever had."

Byron hated Harrow until his last year and a half there; then he liked it. And when he knew he must leave and go to Cambridge, he was so unhappy that he counted the days that remained, not with joy at the thought of leaving, but with sorrow.

At Cambridge he felt himself lonely and miserable at first, as he had at school. But there too he soon made friends. He found plenty of time for games, he rode and shot, rejoiced in feats of swimming and diving. He wrote poetry also, which he afterwards published under the name of Hours of Idleness. It was a good name for the book, for indeed he was so idle in his proper studies, that the wonder is that he was able to take his degree.

It was in 1807, at the age of nineteen, that Lord Byron published his Hours of Idleness, with a rather pompous preface. The poems were not great, some of them indeed were nothing less than mawkish, but perhaps they did not deserve the slashing review which appeared in the Edinburgh Review. The Edinburgh Review was a magazine given at this time to criticising authors very severely, and Byron had to suffer no more than other and greater poets. But he trembled with indignation, and his anger called forth his first really good poem, called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. It is a satire after the style of Pope, and in it Byron lashes not only his reviewers, but also other writers of his day. His criticisms are, many of them, quite wrong, and in after years when he came to know the men he now decried, he regretted this poem, and declared it should never be printed again. But it is still included in his works. Perhaps having just read about Sir Walter Scott, it may amuse you to read what Byron has to say of him.

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Then after a sneer at Scott for making money by his poems, Byron concludes with this passage:—