The sting left in his
mother's heart by the faithless desertion of her husband, after the
desolation of her fortunes, was forever inflicted upon him, and
intensified by her fitful temper; and notwithstanding the change in his
outward prospects which occurred afterwards, he was never able to lift
himself out of the Trophonian cave into which his infancy had been
thrust, any more than Vulcan could have cured that crooked gait of his,
which dated from some vague infantile remembrances of having been
rudely kicked out of heaven over its brazen battlements, one summer's
day,--for that it was a summer's day we are certain from a line of
"Paradise Lost," commemorating the tragic circumstance:--
"From morn till noon he fell, from noon till dewy eve--
_A summer's day_."
And this allusion to Vulcan reminds us that Byron, in addition to all
his other early mishaps, had also the identical clubfoot of the Lemnian
god. Among the guardians over Byron's childhood was a demon, that,
receiving an ample place in his victim's heart, stood demoniacally his
ground through life, transmuting love to hate, and what might have been
benefits to fatal snares.
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