George Gordon, Lord Byron
According To...

"When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bow'd our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watch'd the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife."

- Matthew Arnold Memorial Verses

 

"I do not like Lord Byron's poem quite so well as his last; and I cannot see any advantage in calling a nightingale bulbul, or a rose gul, except to disconcert plain English readers."

- Anna Lætitia Barbauld On reading 'The Bridge of Abydos'

 

"There is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott."

- William Wordsworth On Blake

 

"Lord Byron gets up at two. I get up, quite contrary to my usual custom . . . at 12. After breakfast we sit talking till six. From six to eight we gallop through the pine forest which divide Ravenna from the sea; we then come home and dine, and sit up gossiping till six in the morning. I don't suppose this will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it longer. "

- Percy Bysshe Shelley After a visit in 1821

 

"The creation of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies a great critical effort behind it; else it must be a comparatively poor, barren, and short-lived affair. This is why Byron's poetry had so little endurance in it, and Goethe's so much."

- Matthew Arnold

 

"[He is] the prince of modern poetry, the most talented and impressive figure which the literary world has ever produced."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

"When Byron's eyes were closed in death
We bowed our head, and held our breath.
He taught us little, but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder roll."

- Matthew Arnold