"
Comparatively slight stress was then laid on modern languages. Byron
learnt to read French with fluency, as he certainly made himself familiar
with the great works of the eighteenth century; but he spoke it with so
little ease or accuracy that the fact was always a stumbling-block to his
meeting Frenchmen abroad. Of German he had a mere smattering. Italian was
the only language, besides his own, of which he was ever a master. But the
extent and variety of his general reading was remarkable. His list of
books, drawn up in 1807, includes more history and biography than most men
of education read during a long life; a fair load of philosophy; the poets
en masse; among orators, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Parliamentary debates
from the Revolution to the year 1742; pretty copious divinity, including
Blair, Tillotson, Hooker, with the characteristic addition--"all very
tiresome. I abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God
without the blasphemous notions of sectaries." Lastly, under the head of
"Miscellanies" we have _Spectator, Rambler, World, &c., &c_; among novels,
the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne,
Rabelais, and Rousseau.
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