"She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share
my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot
console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor
then to buy earth to bury her!"

"And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of
woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words (not to mention
my features and gestures), I find again my mother in myself.
It is my mother's blood which gives me the sympathy I feel
for bygone ages, and the tender remembrance of all those
who are now no more."

"What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards
old age, make her for the many things I owe her? One, for
which she would have thanked me--this protest in favour
of women and mothers." (14)

But while a mother may greatly influence the poetic or artistic
mind of her son for good, she may also influence it for evil.
Thus the characteristics of Lord Byron--the waywardness of his
impulses, his defiance of restraint, the bitterness of his hate,
and the precipitancy of his resentments--were traceable in no
small degree to the adverse influences exercised upon his mind
from his birth by his capricious, violent, and headstrong mother.
She even taunted her son with his personal deformity; and it was
no unfrequent occurrence, in the violent quarrels which occurred
between them, for her to take up the poker or tongs, and hurl them
after him as he fled from her presence. (15) It was this unnatural
treatment that gave a morbid turn to Byron's after-life; and,