Byron's life was passed under the fierce light that beats upon an
intellectual throne. He succeeded in making himself--what he wished to
be--the most notorious personality in the world of letters of our century.
Almost every one who came in contact with him has left on record various
impressions of intimacy or interview. Those whom he excluded or
patronized, maligned; those to whom he was genial, loved him. Mr. Southey,
in all sincerity, regarded him as the principle of Evil incarnate; an
American writer of tracts in the form of stories is of the same opinion:
to the Countess Guiccioli he is an archangel. Mr. Carlyle considers him to
have been a mere "sulky dandy." Goethe ranks him as the first English
poet after Shakespeare, and is followed by the leading critics of France,
Italy, and Spain. All concur in the admission that Byron was as proud of
his race as of his verse, and that in unexampled measure the good and evil
of his nature were inherited and inborn. His genealogy is, therefore, a
matter of no idle antiquarianism.

There are legends of old Norse Buruns migrating from their home in
Scandinavia, and settling, one branch in Normandy, another in Livonia. To
the latter belonged a distant Marshal de Burun, famous for the almost
absolute power he wielded in the then infant realm of Russia. Two members
of the family came over with the Conqueror, and settled in England. Of
Erneis de Burun, who had lands in York and Lincoln, we hear little more.
Ralph, the poet's ancestor, is mentioned in Doomsday Book--our first
authentic record--as having estates in Nottinghamshire and Derby. His son
Hugh was lord of Horestan Castle in the latter county, and with his son of
the same name, under King Stephen, presented the church of Ossington to
the monks of Lenton. Tim latter Hugh joined their order; but the race was
continued by his son Sir Roger, who gave lands to the monastery of
Swinstead. This brings us to the reign of Henry II. (1155-1189), when
Robert de Byron adopted the spelling of his name afterwards retained, and