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[Illustration: A Day with Byron]

[Illustration]

  SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.

  "She walks in beauty, like the night
       Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
   And all that's best of dark and bright
       Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
   Thus mellow'd to that tender light
       Which heaven to gaudy day denies."
                       (_Hebrew Melodies._)




A DAY WITH LORD BYRON


_by_


M.C.
GILLINGTON

LONDON
HODDER & STOUGHTON


_In the same Series._

  _Longfellow._
  _Tennyson._
  _Keats._
  _Browning._
  _Wordsworth._
  _Burns._
  _Scott._
  _Shelley._




A DAY WITH BYRON.


One February afternoon in the year 1822, about two o'clock,--for this
is the hour at which his day begins,--"the most notorious personality
of his century" arouses himself, in the Palazzo Lanfranchi at Pisa.
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron, languidly arises and dresses, with the
assistance of his devoted valet Fletcher. Invariably he awakes in very
low spirits, "in actual despair and despondency," he has termed it: this
is in part constitutional, and partly, no doubt, a reaction after the
feverish brain-work of the previous night. It is, at any rate, in
unutterable melancholy and _ennui_ that he surveys in the mirror that
slight and graceful form, which had been idolised by London