The writer of some of the most beautiful lyric poems in English and a romantic almost legendary figure in his own right. Lord Byron is known to many of us as both a creator and archetype of the melancholy, world-weary wanderer in literature to whom he unwittingly bequeathed his own name, the "Byronic hero." Such is the figure revealed in the cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, while the selections in this volume from Hebrew Melodies and Hours of Idleness prove the poet's great lyric gifts. But such additional works as Beppo and The Vision of Judgment, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and the occasional verses penned for his friends show us a poet equally at home in ironic high comedy and biting satire, a poet capable of facing the world and human nature with unwavering realism.