A
deformity in one of his feet was a mortification to him, and impaired
his activity in many ways, although he prided himself upon his powers as
a swimmer.
In 1815, when at the height of his literary and social _eclat_ in
London, he married. In February of the following year he was separated
from Lady Byron, and left England forever, pursued by the execrations of
outraged respectability. In this chorus of abuse there was mingled a
share of cant; but Byron got, on the whole, what he deserved. From
Switzerland, where he spent a summer by Lake Leman, with the Shelleys;
from Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Rome, scandalous reports of his
intrigues and his wild debaucheries were wafted back to England, and
with these came poem after poem, full of burning genius, pride, scorn,
and anguish, and all hurling defiance at English public opinion. The
third and fourth cantos of _Childe Harold_, 1816-1818, were a great
advance upon the first two, and contain the best of Byron's serious
poetry. He has written his name all over the continent of Europe, and on
a hundred memorable spots has made the scenery his own. On the field of
Waterloo, on "the castled crag of Drachenfels," "by the blue rushing of
the arrowy Rhone," in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, in the Coliseum at
Rome, and among the "Isles of Greece," the tourist is compelled to see
with Byron's eyes and under the associations of his pilgrimage.
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