College
Byron went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October
1805. Cambridge did him no good. "The place is the devil," he said, and
according to his own showing he did homage to the genius loci. But
whatever he did or failed to do, he made friends who were worthy of his
choice. Among them were the scholar-dandy Scrope Berdmore Davies,
Francis Hodgson, who died provost of Eton, and, best friend of all, John
Cam Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton). And there was another friend,
a chorister named Edleston, a "humble youth" for whom he formed a
romantic attachment. He died whilst Byron was still abroad,
but not unwept if, as there is little doubt, the mysterious
Thyrza poems of 1811, 1812 refer to his death. During the vacation of
1806, and in 1807 which was one "long vacation," he took to his pen, and
wrote, printed and published most of his Juvenile Poems.
His first
venture was a thin quarto of sixty-six pages, printed by S. and J. Ridge
of Newark. The advertisement is dated the 23rd of December 1806, but
before that date he had begun to prepare a second collection for the
press. One poem (To Mary) contained at least one stanza which was
frankly indecent, and yielding to advice he gave orders that the entire
issue should be thrown into the fire. Early in January 1807 an
expurgated collection entitled Poems on Various Occasions was ready for
private distribution. Encouraged by two critics, Henry Mackenzie and
Lord Woodhouselee, he determined to recast this second issue and publish
it under his own name. Hours of Idleness, by George Gordon Lord Byron,
a minor, was published in June 1807. The fourth and last issue of
Juvenilia, entitled Poems, Original and Translated, was published in
March 1808.
Hours of Idleness enjoyed a brief triumph. The Critical and other
reviews were "very indulgent," but the Edinburgh Review for January 1808
contained an article, not, as Byron believed, by Jeffrey, but by
Brougham, which put, or tried to put, the author and "his poesy" to open
shame. The sole result was that it supplied fresh material and a new
title for some rhyming couplets on "British Bards" which he had begun to
write. A satire on Jeffrey, the editor, and Lord Holland, the patron of
the Edinburgh Review, was slipped into the middle of British Bards,
and the poem rechristened English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (published
the 1st of March 1809).
In April 1808, whilst he was still a minor, Byron entered upon his
inheritance. Hitherto the less ruinous portions of the abbey had been
occupied by a tenant, Lord Grey de Ruthven. The banqueting hall, the
grand drawing-room, and other parts of the monastic building were uninhabitable, but by incurring fresh debts, two sets of apartments
were refurnished for Byron and for his mother. Dismantled and ruinous,
it was still a splendid inheritance. In line with the front of the abbey
is the west front of the priory church, with its hollow arch, once a mighty window, its vacant niches, its delicate Gothic
moldings. The
abbey buildings enclose a grassy quadrangle overlooked by
two-storied cloisters. On the eastern side are the
state apartments occupied by kings and queens not as guests, but by
feudal right. In the park, which is part of Sherwood Forest, there is a
chain of lakes, the largest, the northwest, Byron’s lucid lake. A
waterfall or cascade issues from the lake, in full view of the room
where Byron slept. The possession of this lordly and historic domain was
an inspiration in itself. It was an ideal home for one who was to be
hailed as the spirit or genius of romance.
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