Alhough Mr Johnston paints Wordsworth as a flawed character, he also reclaims him as a swashbuckling young Romantic in the Byronic mode.

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This alternately bucolic and brooding landscape inspired painters not just to depict the actual topography but often to clothe it in Byronic atmosphere.

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But he will never be prime minister, let alone a Byronic hero of grim aspect and sardonic humour, until he rushes upstairs with an axe.

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But Polidori's Byronic ghoul only seduced and killed.

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