He was alternately the pet and victim of his mother's tumultuous nature, and equally injured both by her love and her anger.

A Scotch maid of religious character gave him early serious impressions of religion, and thus added the element of an awakened conscience to the conflicting ones of his character.
Education, in the proper sense of the word, did not exist in England in those days.

Physiological considerations of the influence of the body on the soul, of the power of brain and nerve over moral development, had then not even entered the general thought of society.

The school and college education literally taught him nothing but the ancient classics, of whose power in exciting and developing the animal passions Byron often speaks.
The morality of the times is strikingly exemplified even in its literary criticism.
For example: One of Byron's poems, written while a schoolboy at Harrow, is addressed to 'My Son.' Mr.Moore, and the annotator of the standard edition of Byron's poems, gravely give the public their speculations on the point, whether Lord Byron first became a father while a schoolboy at Harrow; and go into particulars in relation to a certain infant, the claim to which lay between Lord Byron and another schoolfellow.

It is not the nature of the event itself, so much as the cool, unembarrassed manner in which it is discussed, that gives the impression of the state of public morals.