answer.

Dallas asked to see it, and there were placed in his hands rough drafts of
the first and second cantos of "Childe Harold." This time Dallas was
better suited, and to corroborate his judgment the matter was submitted
to Murray, the publisher.

Murray thought the matter had more or less merit, and arrangements were at
once made for its publication. And so it came out, hammered into shape
while in the printer's hands.

"Childe Harold" was an instantaneous, brilliant success--a success beyond
the publisher's or author's expectations. The book ran through seven
editions in four weeks, and Lord Byron "became famous in a night."

London society became Byron-mad. The poet was feted, courted, petted.

He indulged in much innocent and costly dissipation, and some not so
innocent.

Finally all this began to pall upon him. When twenty-six we find him
making a bold stand for reform: he would get married and live a staid,
sober, respectable life. His finances were reduced--all the money he had
made out of his books had been given away, prompted by a foolish whim that
no man should take pay for the product of his mind.

Now he would marry and "settle down"; and to marry a woman with an income
would be no special disadvantage. To sell one's thoughts was abhorrent to
the young man, but to marry for money was quite another thing. Morality
depends upon your point of view.

The paradox of things found expression when Byron the impressionable,
Byron the irresistible, sat himself down and after chewing the end of his
penholder, wrote a letter to Miss Milbanke, with whom he was only slightly
acquainted, proposing marriage. The lady very properly declined. To be
courted with a fresh-nibbed pen, and paper cut sonnet-size, instead of by
a live man, deserves rebuke. Men who propose by mail to a woman in the
next town are either insincere, self-deceived, or else are of the sort
whose pulse never goes above sixty-five, and therefore should be avoided.

Byron was both insincere and self-deceived. He had grown to distrust the
emotions of his heart, and so selected a wife with his head. He chose a
woman with income, one who was strong, cool-headed, safe and sensible.
Miss Milbanke was the antithesis of his mother.

The lady declined--but that is nothing.

They were married within a year.

In another year the wife left her husband and went back to her mother,
carrying in her arms a girl baby, only a few weeks old.

She never re