On the 25th of April, 1816, Byron left England, never to return. And then opened the most brilliant period of his literary career. Instead of being crushed by the situation, Byron's warlike spirit responded to it with defiance, and his suffering and his anger invoked the highest qualities of his extraordinary genius. His career in Italy was as wild and dissipated as ever. Strange to say, the best influence in his irregular life was the Countess Guiccioli, who persuaded him at one time to lay aside the composition of 'Don Juan,' and in whose society he was drawn into ardent sympathy with the Italian liberals. For the cause of Italian unity he did much when it was in its darkest period, and his name is properly linked in this great achievement with those of Mazzini and Cavour. It was in Switzerland, before Byron settled in Venice, that he met Shelley, with whom he was thereafter to be on terms of closest intimacy. Each had a mutual regard for the genius of the other, but Shelley placed Byron far above himself. It was while sojourning near the Shelleys on the Lake of Geneva that Byron formed a union with Claire Clairmont, the daughter of Mrs. Clairmont, who became William Godwin's second wife. The result of this intimacy was a natural daughter, Allegra, for whose maintenance and education Byron provided, and whose early death was severely felt by him. Byron's life in Italy from 1816 to 1823 continued to be a romance of exciting and dubious adventure. Many details of it are given in Byron's letters,--his prose is always as vigorous as his poetry, and as self-revealing,--and it was no doubt recorded in his famous Diary, which was intrusted to his friend Tom Moore, and was burned after Byron's death. Byron's own frankness about himself, his love of mystification, his impulsiveness in writing anything that entered his brain at the moment, and his habit of boasting about his wickedness, which always went to the extent of making himself out worse than he was, stands in the way of getting a clear narration of his life and conduct. But he was always an interesting and commanding and perplexing personality, and the writings about him by his intimates are as various as the moods he indulged in. The bright light of inquiry always shone upon him, for Byron was the most brilliant, the most famous, the most detested, the most worshiped, and the most criticized and condemned man in Europe.