A brief excerpt from the essay:
Byron was a political radical who identified with an oppressed people fighting for freedom. Back home in England, he had sympathized with the Luddites—weavers who smashed the new automatic looms that threatened to put them out of work...
The same spirit inspired the description of the Greeks in “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.” Byron mocked the idea that they should “be grateful to the Turks for their fetters, and to the Franks for their broken promises and lying counsels…to the artist who engraves their ruins and to the antiquary who carries them away.” That last phrase was a pointed reference to Lord Elgin, who denuded the Parthenon of about half its sculptures, destroying much of the building in the process. The Elgin Marbles still reside in the British Museum today.