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 | | His father, John Byron, was a Guards officer, known as "Mad Jack Byron," and the poet was the only offspring of his second marriage, to Catherine Gordon of Gight, a Scottish heiress. |
 | | There was wild blood in the ancestry on both sides, and "Mad Jack" himself soon ran through Catherine's fortune, and died at Valenciennes in 1791, leaving his widow and son in comparative indigence. |
 | | Using the ottava rima, which he learned from John Hookham Frere's "Whistlecraft" and from the Italian poets, Berni, Pulci, and Casti, he turns it to the most amazing variety of purposes, from pathos to the wildest farce, and he maintains his workmanship with unflagging skill. |
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