In his own lifetime Byron stood higher on the continent of Europe than in England or even in America. His works as they came out were translated into French, into German, into Italian, into Russian, and the stream of translation has never ceased to flow. The Bride of Abydos has been translated into ten, Cain into nine languages. Of Manfred there is one Bohemian translation, two Danish, two Dutch, two French, nine German, three Hungarian, three Italian, two Polish, one Romaic, one Rumanian, four Russian and three Spanish translations. The dictum or verdict of Goethe that “the English may think of Byron as they please, but this is certain that they show no poet who is to be compared with him” was and is the keynote of continental European criticism. A survey of European literature is a testimony to the universality of his influence. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Delavigne, Alfred de Musset, in France; Börne, Müller and Heine in Germany; the Italian poets Leopardi and Giusti; Pushkin and Lermontov among the Russians; Michiewicz and Slowacki among the Poles—more or less, as eulogists or imitators or disciples—were of the following of Byron. This fact is beyond dispute, that after the first outburst of popularity he has touched and swayed other nations rather than his own. The part he played or seemed to play in revolutionary politics endeared him to those who were struggling to be free. He stood for freedom of thought and of life. He made himself the mouthpiece of an impassioned and welcome protest against the hypocrisy and arrogance of his order and his race. He lived on the continent and was known to many men in many cities. It has been argued that foreigners are insensible to his defects as a writer, and that this may account for an astonishing and perplexing preference. The cause is rather to be sought in the quality of his art. It was as the creator of new types, “forms more real than living man,” that Byron appealed to the artistic sense and to the imagination of Latin, Teuton or Slav. That “he taught us little” of the things of the spirit, that he knew no cure for the sickness of the soul, were considerations which lay outside the province of literary criticism. “It is a mark,” says Goethe (Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit, 1876, iii. 125), “of true poetry, that as a secular gospel it knows how to free us from the earthly burdens which press upon us, by inward serenity, by outward charm.” Now of this “secular gospel” the redemption from “real woes” by the exhibition of imaginary glory, and imaginary delights, Byron was both prophet and evangelist.
Byron was 5 ft. 8 in. in height, and strongly built; only with difficulty and varying success did he prevent himself from growing fat. At five-and-thirty he was extremely thin. He was “very slightly lame,” but he was painfully conscious of his deformity and walked as little and as seldom as he could. He had a small head covered and fringed with dark brown or auburn curls. His forehead was high and narrow, of a marble whiteness. His eyes were of a light grey colour, clear and luminous. His nose was straight and well-shaped, but “from being a little too thick, it looked better in profile than in front face.” Moore says that it was in “the mouth and chin that the great beauty as well as expression of his fine countenance lay.” The upper lip was of a Grecian shortness and the corners descending. His complexion was pale and colourless. Scott speaks of “his beautiful pale face—like a spirit’s good or evil.” Charles Matthews said that “he was the only man to whom he could apply the word beautiful.” Coleridge said that “if you had seen him you could scarce disbelieve him. . . his eyes the open portals of the sun—things of light and for light.” He was likened to “the god of the Vatican,” the Apollo Belvidere.
The best-known portraits are: (1) Byron at the age of seven by Kay of Edinburgh; (2) a drawing of Lord Byron at Cambridge by Gilchrist (1808); (3) a portrait in oils by George Sanders (1809); (4) a miniature by Sanders (1812); (5) a portrait in oils by Richard Westall, R.A. (1813); (6) a portrait in oils (Byron in Albanian dress) by Thomas Phillips, R.A. (1813); (7) a portrait in oils by Phillips (1813); (8-9) a sketch for a miniature, and a miniature by James Holmes (1815); (10) a sketch by George Henry Harlow (1818); (11) a portrait in oils by Vincenzio Camuccini (in the Vatican) c. 1822; (12) a portrait in oils by W. H. West (1822); (13) a sketch by Count D’Orsay (1823). Busts were taken by Bertel Thorwaldsen (1817) and by Lorenzo Bartolini (1822). The statue (1829) in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, is by Thorwaldsen after the bust taken in 1817.
Authorities.—The best editions of Lord Byron’s poetical works are: (1) The Works of Lord Byron with his Letters and Journals and his Life, by Thomas Moore (17 vols., London, John Murray, 1832, 1833); (2) The Works of Lord Byron (1 vol., 1837, reissued, 1838–1892); (3) The Poetical Works of Lord Byron (6 vols., 1855); (4) The Works of Lord Byron, new, revised and enlarged edition, Letters and Journals, edited by G. E. Prothero, 6 vols., Poetry, edited by E. H. Coleridge (7 vols., 1898–1903); (5) The Poetical Works of Lord Byron, with memoir by E. H. Coleridge (1 vol., 1905).
The principal biographies, critical notices, memoirs, &c., are:—Journey through Albania. . . with Lord Byron, by J. C. Hobhouse (1812; reprinted in 2 vols., 1813 and 1855); Memoirs of the Life and Writings of . . . Lord Byron [by Dr John Watkins] (1822); Letters on the Character and Poetical Genius of Lord Byron, by Sir E. Brydges, Bart. (1824); Correspondence of Lord Byron with a Friend (3 vols., Paris, 1824); Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, by R. C. Dallas (1824); Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron, by Capt. T. Medwin (1824); Last Days of Lord Byron, by W. Parry (1824); Narrative of a Second Visit to Greece, by E. Blaquiere (1825); A Narrative of Lord Byron’s Last Journey to Greece, by Count Gamba (1825); The Life, Writings, Opinions and Times of Lord Byron (3 vols., 1825); The Spirit of the Age, by W. Hazlitt (1825); Memoir of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron, by George Clinton (1826); Correspondence of Byron and some of his Contemporaries, by J. H. Leigh Hunt (2 vols., 1828); Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notices of his Life, by Thomas Moore (2 vols., 1830); The Life of Lord Byron, by J. Galt (1830); Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron, by J. Kennedy (1830); Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (1834); Critical and Historical Essays, by T. B. Macaulay, i. 311–352 (1843); Lord Byron jugé par les témoins de sa vie (1869), My Recollections of Lord Byron, by the Countess Guiccioli (1869); Lady Byron Vindicated, A History of the Byron Controversy, by H. Beecher Stowe (1870); Lord Byron, a Biography, by Karl Elze (1872); Kunst und Alterthum, Goethe’s Sämmtliche Werke (1874), vol. xiii. p. 641; Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodgson (2 vols., 1878); The Real Lord Byron, by J. C. Jeaffreson (2 vols., 1883); A Selection, &c., by A. C. Swinburne (1885); Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author, by E. J. Trelawny (1887); Memoirs of John Murray, by S. Smiles (2 vols., 1891); Poetry of Byron, chosen and arranged by Matthew Arnold (preface) (1892); The Siege of Corinth, edited by E. Kölbing (1893); Prisoner of Chillon and other Poems, edited by E. Kölbing (1896); The Works of Lord Byron, edited by W. Henley, vol. i. (1897); A. Brandl’s “Goethes Verhältniss zu Byron,” Goethe Jahrbuch, zwanzigster Band (1899); Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature, by G. Brandis (6 vols., 1901–1905), translated from Hauptströmungen der Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 4 Bde. (Berlin 1872–1876); Chambers’s Cyclopaedia of English Literature, vol. iii. (1903) art. “Byron,” by T. Watts Dunton; Studies in Poetry and Criticism, by J. Churton Collins (1905); Lord Byron, sein Leben, &c., by Richard Ackermann; Byron, 3 vols. in the Biblioteka velikikh pisatelei pod redaktsei, edited by S. A. Vengesova (St Petersburg, 1906): a variorum translation; Byron et le romantisme français, by Edmond Estève (1907). (E. H. C.)
BYRON, HENRY JAMES (1834–1884), English playwright, son of Henry Byron, at one time British consul at Port-au-Prince, was born in Manchester in January 1834. He entered the Middle Temple as a student in 1858, with the intention of devoting his time to play-writing. He soon ceased to make any pretence of legal study, and joined a provincial company as an actor. In this line he never made any real success; and, though he continued to act for years, chiefly in his own plays, he had neither originality nor charm. Meanwhile he wrote assiduously, and few men have produced so many pieces of so diverse a nature. He was the first editor of the weekly comic paper, Fun, and started the short-lived Comic Trials. His first successes were in burlesque; but in 1865 he joined Miss Marie Wilton (afterwards Lady Bancroft) in the management of the Prince of Wales’s theatre, near Tottenham Court Road. Here several of his pieces, comedies and extravaganzas were produced with success; but, upon his severing the partnership two years later, and starting management on his own account in the provinces, he was financially unfortunate. The commercial success of his life was secured with Our Boys, which was played at the Vaudeville from January 1875 till April 1879—a then unprecedented “run.” The Upper Crust, another of his successes, gave a congenial opportunity to Mr J. L. Toole for one of his
