common with the English aristocracy, and hence, in 1805, he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge. He spent about the usual time there, but took no degree, and while he was still an undergraduate printed his _Hours of Idleness_, first called _Juvenilia_. It appeared publicly in March 1807, and a year later was the subject of a criticism, rather excessive than unjust, in the _Edinburgh Review_. Byron, who had plenty of pluck, and who all his life long inclined in his heart to the Popian school, spent a considerable time upon a verse-answer, _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, in which he ran amuck generally, but displayed ability which it was hopeless to seek in his first production. Then he went abroad, and the excitement of his sojourn in the countries round the Mediterranean for the next two years not only aroused, but finally determined and almost fully developed, his genius. On his return home he took his seat and went into society with the success likely to attend an extremely handsome young man of twenty-three, with a vague reputation both for ability and naughtiness, a fairly old title, and something of an estate. But his position as a "lion" was not thoroughly asserted till the publication, in February 1812, of _Childe Harold_, which with some difficulty he had been induced by his friend Dallas, his publisher Murray, and the critic Gifford to put before some frigid and trivial _Hints from Horace_. Over _Childe Harold_ the English public went simply mad, buying seven editions in five weeks; and during the next three years Byron produced, in rapid succession, _The Giaour_, _The Bride of Abydos_, _The Corsair_, _Lara_, _The Siege of Corinth_, and _Hebrew Melodies_. He could hardly write fast enough for the public to buy. Then the day after New Year's Day 1814, he married Miss Milbanke, a great heiress, a future baroness in her own right, and handsome after a fashion, but of a cold, prim, and reserved disposition, as well as of a very unforgiving temper. It probably did not surprise any one who knew the pair when, a year later, they separated for ever.