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Ⅲ. Romantic Poets of the
Second Generation
Introduction
As getting older, the
first generation became more and more conservative. The scene of poetry,
which dominated by the first generation, became quiet too. Therefore, an
emergent appealing for new blood was coming. The second generation, under
that situation, emerged. The second generation, Byron, Shelley and the young
genius poet Keats, led the Romantic poetry out off mountains, rivers,
countryside, the study musing and meditation. They were revolutionary in
thought, passionate in emotion. With the revolutionary passion, they
appealed liberty and equality, which were lacked in the society, firmly
through their works. In that way, they brought a fresh air into English
Romanticism, leading it to another top. Among these three, Byron influenced
the most; Shelly probed the deepest in art; and Keats got the highest in
art.
1. George Gordon Byron（1788-1824）
Life
George Gordon
Byron was born on 22 January 1788, in London. He was the son of Captain John
Byron, “Mad Jack” who married Lady Carmarthen and had by her a daughter
called Augusta who influenced the life of his son George Byron greatly.
Later John Byron married the second wife Catherine Gordon Byron (of the old
and violent line of Scottish Gordons), who became Byron’s mother. Catherine
took her son to Scotland, where a deformity of his foot soon became evident.
Special boots were made and treatments devised, but Byron limped all of his
life. He lived through his reading, being especially fond of Roman history,
and dreamed of leading regiments of brave soldiers.
When his grandfather the Wicked Lord died, Byron
became, at the tender age of ten, the sixth Lord Byron. Byron and his mother
moved nearby Nottingham and visited his future inheritance, the dilapidated
Gothic Newstead Abbey. They were very poor. The Byron estate was mostly tied
up in lawsuits, but Mrs. Byron finally got her son a decent income. He was
sent to Dr. Glennie’s Academy at Dulwich and then to
Harrow where Byron was
mercilessly taunted by other boys. He went back to Newstead for his
Christmas holidays and fell in love with a neighbor named Mary Ann Chaworth.
So infatuated was he that he refused to return to Harrow after the holidays
ended, and it took a huge fight with Lord Ruthyn to finally get him to go
back. Staying at Newstead, he probably first met his half-sister Augusta in
1802. After his love Mary Ann but married another in 1805, Byron became a
very wild sort of person. He enrolled in Cambridge, but did no work, since
that was the fashion of the time. He wrote a number of verses, and spent a
great deal money as well. Around this time, Byron and some of his school
friends were staying in a former monastery. They developed a habit of
dressing up as monks and drinking toasts from a monk’s skull that they had
accidentally dug up. He inevitably spent beyond his income of £500 a year
and had to get a relative’s signature to obtain a loan, as he was still only
seventeen. He turned to his half-sister, Augusta Byron Leigh. Augusta’s
husband was a big spender too, so she understood and signed.
While staying at his mother’s, a neighbor of Mrs. Byron’s encouraged him to
publish his poems. In 1806, the book Fugitive Pieces appeared. Byron sent
copies to two of his friends, one of whom wrote back to say that he thought
the poem To Mary was far too shocking to be read by the general public.
Byron took this opinion very seriously, and ordered every copy of the volume
burnt. The book was republished in March 1806 as Hours of Idleness. It sold
well, but reviews were mixed, and Byron answered his detractors with the
very successful satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
In 1808, he returned to Newstead. And in 1809, he took his seat in the House
of Lords, and then, in June, Byron and his friends set off on a European
tour, which ended up as a tour of the Middle East. They eventually found
themselves in Albania, where Byron was very well received by Ali, the Pacha
of Yanina, a ruler renowned for his cruelty. Byron admired him for having
the power and courage to stand outside the normal society. It was around
this time that Byron began work on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which he
would work on off and on for the next eight years. At his time he also wrote
one of his most famous lyrics, Maid of Athens. In Greece, he amused himself
by swimming the Hellespont; and he became fired with the wish, which was to
lead to his return and death, that Greece should be freed from the Turks.
Eventually, he returned to England in 1811, but England turned out to be a
very sad place for him. His mother died of a stroke before he was able to
see her again; one of his best friends drowned; and his sister Augusta’s
marriage was almost completely wrecked. He wrote no poetry for a long time.
But, at the insistence of a friend, the first two cantos of Childe Harold
were published in February 1812, and Byron became an overnight sensation.
Women everywhere were throwing themselves at him, in some cases almost
literally. Lady Caroline Lamb was the most noted and determined of these
women. Byron got tired of her very soon after their affair started, and in
fact, soon expressed a desire to marry Caroline’s cousin, Annabella Milbanke.
Unexpectedly, she turned him down and Byron consoled himself with a quick
affair with Lady Oxford.
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