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Byron was well fitted by birth and temperament to be the spokesman of
this fierce discontent. He inherited from his mother a haughty and
violent temper, and profligate tendencies from his father. He was
through life a spoiled child, whose main characteristic was willfulness.
He liked to shock people by exaggerating his wickedness, or by
perversely maintaining the wrong side of a dispute. But he had traits of
bravery and generosity. Women loved him, and he made strong friends.
There was a careless charm about him which fascinated natures as unlike
each other as Shelley and Scott. By the death of the fifth Lord Byron
without issue, Byron came into a title and estates at the age of ten.
Though a liberal in politics he had aristocratic feelings, and was vain
of his rank as he was of his beauty. He was educated at Harrow and at
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was idle and dissipated, but did a
great deal of miscellaneous reading. He took some of his Cambridge
set--Hobhouse, Matthews, and others--to Newstead Abbey, his ancestral
seat, where they filled the ancient cloisters with eccentric orgies.
Byron was strikingly handsome. His face had a spiritual paleness and a
classic regularity, and his dark hair curled closely to his head.
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