| ---- | |- Frederick | | | | | GEORGE F. WILLIAM, 9th and present | | Lord Byron. | | | |- GEORGE, 8th Lord (1818-1870) | ------------------- | 1. Marchioness = John Byron (1751-1791) = 2. Miss Gordon of Gight of Carmarthen | | | | Colonel Leigh = Augusta GEORGE GORDON, 6th Lord | | (1788-1824). Married Several daughters | Anna Isabella (1792-1860), | daughter of Sir Ralph | Milbanke and Judith, | daughter of Sir Edward | Noel (Viscount Wentworth), | and by her had ------------------------- | Earl Lovelace = Augusta-Ada (1815-1852). | -------------------------------------- | | | Mr. Blunt = Lady Anne. Byron Noel Ralph Gordon, (died 1862) now Lord Wentworth CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY AND FAMILY. Byron's life was passed under the fierce light that beats upon an intellectual throne. He succeeded in making himself--what he wished to be--the most notorious personality in the world of letters of our century. Almost every one who came in contact with him has left on record various impressions of intimacy or interview. Those whom he excluded or patronized, maligned; those to whom he was genial, loved him. Mr. Southey, in all sincerity, regarded him as the principle of Evil incarnate; an American writer of tracts in the form of stories is of the same opinion: to the Countess Guiccioli he is an archangel. Mr. Carlyle considers him to have been a mere "sulky dandy." Goethe ranks him as the first English poet after Shakespeare, and is followed by the leading critics of France, Italy, and Spain. All concur in the admission that Byron was as proud of his race as of his verse, and that in unexampled measure the good and evil of his nature were inherited and inborn. His genealogy is, therefore, a matter of no idle antiquarianism.