The poem took, rather to its author's
surprise, who said that he woke one morning and found himself famous.
_Childe Harold_ opened a new field to poetry: the romance of travel, the
picturesque aspects of foreign scenery, manners, and costumes. It is
instructive of the difference between the two ages, in poetic
sensibility to such things, to compare Byron's glowing imagery with
Addison's tame _Letter from Italy_, written a century before. _Childe
Harold_ was followed by a series of metrical tales, the _Giaour_, the
_Bride of Abydos_, the _Corsair_, _Lara_, the _Siege of Corinth_,
_Parisina_, and the _Prisoner of Chillon_, all written in the years
1813-1816. These poems at once took the place of Scott's in popular
interest, dazzling a public that had begun to weary of chivalry romances
with pictures of Eastern life, with incidents as exciting as Scott's,
descriptions as highly colored, and a much greater intensity of passion.
So far as they depended for this interest upon the novelty of their
accessories, the effect was a temporary one. Seraglios, divans, bulbuls,
Gulistans, Zuleikas, and other oriental properties deluged English
poetry for a time, and then subsided; even as the tide of moss-troopers,
sorcerers, hermits, and feudal castles had already had its rise and
fall.
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