Newstead was sold, and still the load accumulated. Then he
married, probably in the expectation that his wife's fortune would
release him; but her money was locked up, and the step, instead of
relieving him, brought only an accession of misery. Every one knows the
sad result of the union; which was aggravated by the increasing assaults
of duns and sheriffs' officers.
[Footnote 1: MOORE--_Life of Byron_, ed. 1860. p. 127.]
Byron was almost driven to sell the copyright of his books, but he was
prevented from doing so by his publisher, who pressed upon him a sum of
money to meet his temporary wants. During the first year of his
marriage, his house was nine times in the possession of bailiffs, his
door was almost daily beset by duns, and he was only saved from gaol by
the privileges of his rank. All this, to a sensitive nature such as his,
must have been gall and bitterness; while his wife's separation from
him, which shortly followed, could not fail to push him almost to the
point of frenzy. Although he had declined to receive money for his first
poems, Byron altered his views, and even learnt to drive a pretty hard
bargain with his publisher.[1] But Moore does not, in his biography of
the poet, inform us whether he ever got rid, except by death, of his
grievous turmoil of debt.
[Footnote 1: "You offer 1,500 guineas for the new Canto [the fourth of
'Childe Harold']: I won't take it.
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