Lord Byron was not welcomed into the House of Lords: he simply pushed in
the door because he had a right to. He thirsted for approbation, for
distinction, for notoriety. His sensitive soul hung upon newspaper
clippings with feverish expectations; and about all the attention he
received was in the line of being damned by faint praise, or smothered
with silence. Patriotism, as far as England was concerned, was not a part
of Byron's composition.

When all Great Britain was execrating Napoleon, picturing him as a devil
with horns and hoofs, Byron looked upon him as the world's hero.

In this frame of mind he went forth and borrowed a goodly sum, and started
cut to view the world. He was accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, and his
valet, Fletcher.

It was a two years' trip, this jolly trio made--down along the coast of
France, Spain, through the Straits of Gibraltar, lingering in queer old
cities, mousing over historic spots, alternately living like princes or
vagabonds. They frolicked, drank, made love to married women, courted
maidens, fought, feasted and did all the foolish things that sophomores
usually do when they have money and opportunity.

These months of travel supplied Byron enough in way of suggestion to keep
him writing many moons. His active imagination seized upon everything
picturesque, peculiar, romantic, sentimental or tragic, and stored it up
in those wondrous brain-cells, to be used when the time was ripe.

The disciples of Munchausen, who delight in showing Byron's verse to be
only biography, have found a rich field in that two years' travel. One man
really did a brilliant thing--in three volumes--recounting the conquering