He was the ultimate Don Juan, but it seems that even Lord Byron needed a bit of help when it came to the language of love.

A handwritten leather-bound phrasebook, filled with expressions of love in Greek, belonging to the poet has come to light. Phrases such as “I love you with all my Heart” were intended to help him to woo women during his first visit to Greece.

The notebook, dating from 1809, has been discovered in the archives of the National Library of Scotland. Experts found it while cataloguing the 10,000 Byron documents in the recently acquired John Murray archive, which includes the poet’s correspondence with his publisher and other related material.

Dividing 169 phrases of “Familiar Dialogue”, as Byron described it, into headings such as “Tender expressions of love”, he listed the Greek words for “My Heart!” and “My Love!” – with the exclamation marks crossed out. He also translated “My dear Soul” and “My Life”.

He did, however, include more practical phrases for travel, such as “My dear Sir, do me that favour”, “Give me something to eat” and “It appears to me three days since I have eaten”.

David McClay, curator of the John Murray Archive, described the notebook as very important. “You can imagine him saying these words. Anyone who knows his correspondence knows he communicated in a forthright and colourful way. This is the closest we come to hearing his voice,” he said.

Mr McClay said that Byron had a love affair with the Greek people and their culture, which influenced his creative work and understanding of language. “Byron was fascinated by languages and learnt several, including Albanian. This gives you the actual evidence,” he said.

Byron learnt classical Greek at school and he commented on the differences between it and the 18th-centu-ry Greek in his letters, writing: “I speak the Romaic or modern Greek, tolerably, it does not differ from the ancient dialects so much as you would conceive, but the pronunciation is diametrically opposite.”

Byron, who died in 1824 aged 36, was the most influential English poet of his day. He personified Romanticism at its most brooding. He was adored by women and envied by men, and when his life became the subject of incessant gossip and scandal loomed he made his escape, going first to Switzerland and Italy before travelling to Greece, Albania and Malta.

The first part of his semi-autobio-graphical poetic account of this grand tour, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, cantos I and II, was published soon after his return to England by John Murray. It was an immediate and enduring success, helping to establish Byron as one of the greatest poets of his and any age.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage had been turned down by several prominent publishers but proved an overnight sensation. As Byron remarked later: “I awoke one day to find myself famous.”

His first visit to Greece helped to instil sympathy for the cause of Greek independence from Turkey. Byron returned to support that cause in 1823, dying there of fever the following year. In his last hours, he told his friend Count Pietro Gamba: “I have given [Greece] my time, my means, my health – and now I give her my life. What could I do more?”

The notebook’s handwriting is unlike his typical messy hand, in which he repeatedly scored out lines as he changed his mind. It also includes a jotted version of his 1809 poem Lines Written in an Album, which was dedicated to Mrs Constance Spencer Smith, with whom he had a short but passionate affair.

Read the blog A Don's Life

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