Byron was by far the most famous of the poets we call “Romantic,” both in Britain and throughout Europe, and his influence was enormous. Everyone read him. The greatest Polish Romantic, Mickiewicz, gave the greatest Russian Romantic, Pushkin, a volume of Byron’s poetry in English, published in Germany. In France alone at least twenty-five poems on the death of Byron appeared within a year of it; in Greece, where Byron died of a fever while helping the revolution against the Ottomans, Solomos wrote an ode on his death in 166 quatrains. His life was flamboyant and sometimes scandalous; so was his poetry, which included oriental tales, verse dramas, tender love lyrics, and epic social satire, notably Don Juan.