Books: Poet on a Chain

THE SELECTED LETTERS OF LORD BYRON (276 pp.)—Edited by Jacques Borzun—Farrar, Straus & Young ($3.75).

The character of Lord Byron

Was of low degree,

Caused by his reckless conduct

And bad company.

So much even the backwoods balladists of North America knew, and any English major can recite the rest of the awful truth: the great Romantic poet was a no-proof lush and a sexsmith who took all womanhood for his forge. For love of him, a titled lady stabbed herself with a pair of scissors, and for hate, a cast-off mistress had him burned in...