Lord Byron's life was destined to be one continuous fight. Born lame, he persevered until he became the finest swimmer, the best shot and the most dauntless horse-rider of his time. The world denied his genius, so he made up his mind he would become the first poet of his age. His response to the article in the _Edinburgh Review_ was that terrible satire hurled at his critics under the title of _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, at the head of which appeared these two epigrams from Shakespeare and Pope:-- "I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew! Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers!"--_Shakespeare._ "Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true, There are as mad, abandon'd critics too."--_Pope._ When Byron had hurled this lance, he could not draw back. He had pledged himself heart and soul to poetry, he had taken upon him the mantle of Nessus which was to consume him but also to immortalise him. And yet he hesitated for a brief period. By birth he had a right to sit in the House of Lords, and he decided he would take his seat there. If his aristocratic peers received him cordially, who knew what might happen? He might give up everything, even the idea of his journey to Persia with his friend Hobhouse, to follow his schoolfellow Robert Peel in a political career. It should all depend on a smile or a hand-shake; and for such an acknowledgment he would fling away the pen that had written the _Hours of Idleness_ and _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_; for a smile and a hand-shake he would bid farewell to games, betting, races, drunkenness, and break himself off from those youthful follies in which he had tried to drown the memory of Miss Chaworth; he would leave them all, even the woman who had followed him to Brighton dressed as a man, whose scandalous presence had roused the indignation of the prudish English aristocracy! It was at this crisis he wrote to his mother the following letter, which shows what a degree of coldness existed between mother and son:-- "TO THE HONOURABLE LADY BYRON "NEWSTEAD ABBEY, NOTTS _October_ 7, 1808