From Byron's birth (which in spite of what Dallas and several others have said in favour of Dover, most probably took place in No. 24 Holles Street, London, on the 22nd of January 17881 till he became a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1805, his life is comparatively free from events of vital importance unknown to Byronic biographers. Most individuals who had an important influence on the poet's character are known, at least by name, up to that date.

I.
"Thyrza'.

Referring to his friendship for Edward Noel Long, Byron writes in one of his journals, "His friendship, and a violent, though pure, love and passion - which held me at the

See Add. MS. 31037, p. 7. British Museum. Letter from Byron's mother to Mrs. Leigh (wife of General Leigh, residing in London) dated Aberdeen May 5th 1791. Extract: "I hope you will excuse the trouble I am going to give you. It will be doing me a very particular favour, if you would send for Mr. Hunter the surgeon and give him the enclosed letter from me, it is about getting a proper shoe for George's foot, as I cannot get a right one made here. Mr. Hunter some time ago wrote to Dr. Livingstone, giving him directions how it should be made, but it never was right (sic) made or it would have answered better, and as Mr. Hunter saw George when he was born, I am in hopes, he will be able to give directions for a proper shoe to be made, without seeing it (sic) again. Nothing but want of money prevents my sending him up to London for Mr. Hunter to see his foot."

same period (summer of 1806) were the then romance of the most romantic period of my life".1

There are many reasons against considering the person who inspired this 'pure love and passion' as the girl in boy's clothing, who was domesticated with Byron at Brompton in 1808, who, at least on one occasion, was introduced by him to acquaintances as his brother Gordon, and whose reply to the remark of a lady at Brighton concerning the beauty of her (the girl's) horse, was, "Yes it was gave me by my brother." There is, as yet, no published evidence that Byron knew this girl previous to 1808. That she could scarcely have been anything but a 'sancy fille de joie' as Jeaffreson terms her, is sufficiently proved, by the fact of her having followed around in male attire, a highly egotistical youth of eighteen. This girl has been considered as the original of Thyrza' by Minto, the author of several short articles on Byron, but to make this appear highly improbable, it is sufficient to quote the eight and ninth stanzas of the poem "To Thyrza', written on the 11 th of October 1811.5

3

"Ours too the glance none saw besides;
The smile none else might understand;
The whispered thoughts of hearts allied,
The pressure of the thrilling hand."

"The kiss so guiltless and refined

That love each warmer wish forbore;

'Life, Letters, and Journals of Lord Byron' by Thomas Moore.

1 vol. edition, London, 1838. p. 32. (23.)

2 'More's Life' etc. 1 vol. ed. p. 70.

3 The Real Lord Byron, the Story of the Poet's Life. Standard ed.

p. 120.

4 See article on Byron in the 9th edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica', also the Athenæum for 1876, II, p. 306.

5 Elze is of the opinion that Thyrza died in Oct. 1811. See the 3rd edition of his work p. 123.

Those eyes proclaimed so pure a mind

Even passion blushed to plead for more."

In his letter to Dallas written on the same day that he composed the above verses, Byron writes, "I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but 'I have almost forgot the taste of grief', and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth."1 "Five years ago' would have been in 1806, when under the influence of the 'pure love and passion'. Dallas replies, "I thank you for your confidential communication at the bottom of the stanza (stanza 9, canto 2, of 'Childe Harold This stanza does not refer to Eddlestone as the note in Murrays 1864 ed. of Byron's works has it.) which so much delighted me. How truly do I wish that the being to whom that verse now belongs had lived, and lived yours! What your obligations to her would have been in that case is inconceivable."3 Dallas who was related to the Byron family by marriage, was not the man to recommend the girl in boy's clothing to the chief of the house as a suitable spouse. Moreover "Thyrza' was dead before Byron's return to England in July 1811, but he was not aware of the fact till the 11th of the following October,

"And oft I thought at Cynthia's noon,
When sailing o'er the Egean wave,

"Now Thyrza gazes on that moon"

Alas, it gleamed upon her grave!"

whereas the girl in boy's clothing was alive and seen

1 'Moore's Life' etc., letter 71.

2 Tozer in his edition of Childe Harold makes the same mistake. 'Childe Harold' edited with introduction and notes by H. F. Tozer, M. A., second edition, Oxford, 1888. See Dallas, 'Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron'. London, 1824, p. 148.

3 R. C. Dallas,

1824, p. 147.

'Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron'. London,

by Dallas in 1812, after the publication of the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold'. 1

That Thyrza was not Eddlestone, as the author of an article written for the 'Athenæum' of July 5th 1884 surmised is self-evident. Why should Byron have written of her as of a female to Dallas and in his poems, had the individual in his mind been a male? Jeaffreson's supposition, the hint of which he probably got from Trelawny, 2 who knew nothing about the matter, that Margaret Parker, the poet's cousin, who died a year or two after Byron saw her for the last time in 1800, and to whose memory the feeble elegy in the 'Hours of Idleness' was written in 1802, was "the chief, if not the only inspiring force of the 'Poems to Thyrza',' 11 3 is certainly, as Bleibtreu maintains, absurd to anyone who has read the poems in question. Bleibtreu follows Minto's example and believes Thyrza and the girl in page's clothing to be identical. "

5

Who 'Thyrza' was, is not, and will probably never be known, unless the publication of the Hobhouse papers, those of Hobhouse's eldest daughter Lady Dorchester, or Byron's letters from Italy, which were seen by the author of the

1 Dallas' 'Recollections' pp. 147, 48.

2 Trelawny's 'Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron'.

London, 1858, p. 197.

3 The Real Lord Byron, standard ed. p 75.

4 Geschichte der Englischen Litteratur im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert

von Karl Bleibtreu, 2te Auflage, p. 232 and fol.

p. 244.

5 Geschichte der Englischen Litteratur im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert

***

6 Nanny Smith an old servant of Newstead Abbey said to Washington Irving as regards the boy in girl's clothing: "Once, it is true. he had a beautiful boy as a page, which the house-maids said was a girl. The house-maids however, were very jealous, one of them in particular took the matter in great dudgeon. Her name was Lucy, she was a great favourite with Lord Byron; and had been much noticed by him, and began to have high notions." See Washington Irving's Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, London 1850, p. 77.