CHAPTER III

Byron at Lisbon--How he quarrelled with his own countrymen--His poem _Childe Harold_--His fits of mad folly and subsequent depression--His marriage--His conjugal squabbles--He again quits England--His farewell to wife and child--His life and amours at Venice--He sets out for Greece--His arrival at Missolonghi--His illness and death

The first news received from the poet-traveller was from Lisbon, and it bore the mark of that gloomy spirit of mockery which, when fully developed, becomes genius.

The letter was addressed to Mr. Hodgson, and began in the following strain:--

"I am very happy here, because I loves oranges, and talk bad Latin to the monks, who understand it, as it is like their own,--and I goes into society (with my pocket-pistols), and I swims in the Tagus all across at once, and I rides on an ass or a mule, and swears Portugese, and have got a diarrhœa and bites from the mosquitoes. But what of that? Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a pleasuring."

And yet, while he was mocking in this fashion, he could write such mournful lines as these in _Childe Harold_:--