_dau._ of W. Godwin's second wife (_q.v._). In 1817 he was in Rome,
whence returning to Venice he wrote the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_.
In the same year he sold his ancestral seat of Newstead, and about the
same time _pub._ _Manfred_, _Cain_, and _The Deformed Transformed_. The
first five cantos of _Don Juan_ were written between 1818 and 1820,
during which period he made the acquaintance of the Countess Guiccioli,
whom he persuaded to leave her husband. It was about this time that he
received a visit from Moore, to whom he confided his MS. autobiography,
which Moore, in the exercise of the discretion left to him, burned in
1824. His next move was to Ravenna, where he wrote much, chiefly dramas,
including _Marino Faliero_. In 1821-22 he finished _Don Juan_ at Pisa,
and in the same year he joined with Leigh Hunt in starting a short-lived
newspaper, _The Liberal_, in the first number of which appeared _The
Vision of Judgment_. His last Italian home was Genoa, where he was still
accompanied by the Countess, and where he lived until 1823, when he
offered himself as an ally to the Greek insurgents. In July of that year
he started for Greece, spent some months in Cephalonia waiting for the
Greeks to form some definite plans. In January, 1824, he landed at
Missolonghi, but caught a malarial fever, of which he _d._ on April 19,
1824.

The final position of B. in English literature is probably not yet
settled. It is at present undoubtedly lower than it was in his own
generation. Yet his energy, passion, and power of vivid and
richly-coloured description, together with the interest attaching to his
wayward and unhappy career, must always make him loom large in the
assembly of English writers. He exercised a marked influence on
Continental literature, and his reputation as poet is higher in some
foreign countries than in his own.