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George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April
1824) was a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Among Lord Byron's
best-known works are the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan.
The latter remained incomplete on his death. He was regarded as one of the greatest
European poets and remains widely read.
Lord Byron's fame rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which
featured extravagant living, numerous love affairs, debts, separation, and
allegations of incest and sodomy. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb
as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know."
Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary
organization the Carbonari in its struggle against Austria, and later travelled to
fight against the Turks in the Greek War of Independence, for which the Greeks
consider him a national hero. He died from fever in Messolonghi.
His daughter Ada Lovelace, notable in her own right, collaborated with Charles
Babbage on the analytical engine, a predecessor to modern computers.
 Character
Lord Byron, by all accounts, had a particularly magnetic personality – one may say
astonishingly so. He obtained a reputation as being unconventional, eccentric,
flamboyant and controversial. He was given to extremes of temper. Byron had a great
fondness for animals, most famously for a Newfoundland dog named Boatswain; when
Boatswain contracted rabies, Byron reportedly nursed him without any fear of
becoming bitten and infected. Boatswain lies buried at Newstead Abbey and has a
monument larger than his master's. The inscription, Byron's "Epitaph to a dog", has
become one of his best-known works, reading in part:
Near this Spot
are deposited the Remains of one
who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferosity,
and all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.
This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
if inscribed over human Ashes,
is but a just tribute to the Memory of
BOATSWAIN, a DOG,
who was born in Newfoundland May 1803,
and died at Newstead Nov.r 18th, 1808.
Byron also kept a bear while he was a student at Trinity College,
Cambridge (reputedly out of resentment of Trinity rules forbidding pet dogs - he
later suggested that the bear apply for a college fellowship).
At other times in his life, Byron kept a fox, monkeys, a parrot,
cats, an eagle, a crow, a crocodile, a falcon, peacocks, guinea hens, an Egyptian
crane, a badger, geese, and a heron.
Source : Some of the information on
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Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Lord George
Byron - Projector - Biography
