England and ridding himself of the annoyances which had clustered
thick about him, he expressed in these lines:

Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!

Meanwhile he enjoyed himself in reckless fashion. Money poured in
upon him from his English publisher. For two cantos of "Childe
Harold" and "Manfred," Murray paid him twenty thousand dollars.
For the fourth canto, Byron demanded and received more than twelve
thousand dollars. In Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelley
and Thomas Moore; but eventually he parted from them both, for he
was about to enter upon a new phase of his curious career.

He was no longer the Byron of 1815. Four years of high living and
much brandy-and-water had robbed his features of their refinement.
His look was no longer spiritual. He was beginning to grow stout.
Yet the change had not been altogether unfortunate. He had lost
something of his wild impetuosity, and his sense of humor had
developed. In his thirtieth year, in fact, he had at last become a
man.

It was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him
for the rest of his life what a well-known writer has called "a
star on the stormy horizon of the poet." This woman was Teresa,
Countess Guiccioli, whom he first came to know in Venice. She was
then only nineteen years of age, and she was married to a man who
was more than forty years her senior. Unlike the typical Italian
woman, she was blonde, with dreamy eyes and an abundance of golden