Sublime

Lord Byron (1788-1824) incarne le paradoxe du poète rebelle, du paresseux révolté, du révolutionnaire décontracté. Son premier recueil de poésie publié en 1807 lorsqu’il avait 19 ans et étudiait au Trinity College à Cambridge s’appelait Heures de paresse. C’était un aristocrate, un riche oisif. Cependant,

Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled, And turn’d a nation’s shallow joy to gloom.

For pleasures past I do not grieve, Nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave No thing that claims a tear.

She had moved from exploring the creative power of humankind—a favorite theme of Shelley and Byron—to plumbing the depths of human nature.

Can Volume, Pillar, Pile, preserve thee great? Or must thou trust Tradition’s simple tongue, When Flattery sleeps with thee and History does thee wrong?

An odd sort of a friendship developed between the young Lovelace and the older Babbage. Growing up in the shadow of her famously philandering father, the poet and baron George Byron, whom she barely knew, Ada had been discouraged from literary study. Her mother, Lady Anne Isabella Byron, a strict Christian and a formidable intellect in her own righ