For a long time the Thyrza poems of 1812 puzzled critics. They were held to be addressed to no one in general; there was a claim by some that they were addressed to a man, a friend he loved. But there can be no doubt that Mary furnished the chief inspiration. In _Childe Harold_, Canto II-9, he refers to Mary in the line "love and life together fled," and in a Thyrza poem he uses the words, "When love and life alike were new." Mary Chaworth was really responsible for Byronism. Whether she ever committed adultery with him and had a child by him, as is claimed by the author of _Byron, the Last Phase_, one cannot say. In his four early volumes of poetry, published before he was twenty-one, there are many poems inspired by Mary, and four poems, written in 1805, addressed to Caroline, who was undoubtedly Mary, are of especial excellence. The poems of his youth written to her included the "Fragment," written after her marriage, in 1805, and "Remembrance," written the year after. Both of these poems were published after Byron's death. A pathetic poem, _In the Hours of Idleness_ (1807), is "To a Lady"; "Oh, had my fate been linked with thine." "When We Two Parted" was written the following year, and referred to Mary. In 1808 Byron wrote a series of sad love poems to Mary, and they were published in the next year, in 1809, in Hobhouse's _Imitations and Translations_. They include "Remind Me Not, Remind Me Not," "To a Lady," "When Man Expelled from Eden's Bowers," "Stanzas to a Lady on Leaving England," "Well! Thou Art Happy," "And Wilt Thou Weep When I Am Low," and "There Was a Time I Need Not Name." The six great poems written to Thyrza and published in 1812, with _Childe Harold_, were "To Thyrza" ("Without a stone to mark the spot"), "Away, Away, Ye Notes of Woe," "One Struggle More and I Am Free," "Euthanasia," "And Thou Art Dead and Young and Fair," and "If Sometimes in the Haunts of Men." Mary was as if dead to him, and he wrote of her accordingly. About the time of the Thyrza poems, 1811 and 1812, he wrote other poems to her like the "Epistle to a Friend" "I have seen my bride another's bride" and "On Parting New." In 1813 appeared the two sonnets, "To Genevra" and "Remember Him Whom Passion's Power"; in 1814, "Thou Art Not False, But Thou Art Fickle," "Farewell! If Ever Fondest Prayer," "I Speak Not, I Trace Not, I Breathe Not Thy Name." In 1815 appeared "There's Not a Joy the World Can Give That It Takes Away," and 1816, "There Be None of Beauty's Daughters." Byronism, then, was due chiefly to the poet's early quarrels with his mother, the separation from his wife, but above all his rejection by Mary Chaworth. III