 The friendship between Byron and Giraud has become a topic of interest among scholars and biographers of Byron . Many believe that the pair 's relationship was platonic , but correspondence between Byron and his friends has been used since the late 20th century to argue that the two were engaged in a love affair . The earliest claim of a sexual relationship between them comes from George Colman 's poem Don Leon , in which Byron is the principal character and Giraud is portrayed as his liberator from the sexual prejudices in Britain . The poem is not biographical ; it promotes Colman 's own social and political views . 
