I.

Ir is now nearly fifteen years ago since, on a summer holiday's evening, I used to climb up to Harrow's old and venerable church-yard; amidst the humble monuments of which I would seek one humbler than the rest, and amidst the mournful yews of which I would❘ seek the most mournful—(its trunk was withered, and some of its boughs were broken down) -for on that monument the pencil of Byron had traced lines religiously preserved-for under that yew-tree, if there be any truth in school-boy legend, Byron, albeit a stirring-minded stripling, would oftentimes meditatingly court a yet-unwilling Muse,

Oh! how well do I, even now, remember the kind of awful melancholy with which, in those twilight reveries, I would mantle our Poet's youth! how devotedly I looked upon, how fondly I lingered over, each little knoll and nook sacred to the romantic memory of the bard, who, himself a mystery, was then pursuing on far-distant shores that mysterious career, which excited almost as much of the marvel as of the admiration of his countrymen.

Little did I deem, at that time, that it would be my fate to share the intimacy of his nearest relatives and dearest friends-to hear of him from some whom he left, from others whom he never ceased to love; to stand, amidst strange faces and warlike garbs, on the very spot where a few weeks before he had breathed his last, as I once did-or to write his life for a foreign people, in a foreign land, as I am now doing.

Lord Byron was born in Holles Street, London, Jan. 22, 1788, and appeared at that time, however

(1) He received the name of George Byron Gordon, in consequence of a condition imposed by the will of his maternal ancestor. The late Duke of Gordon was his godfather.

Our poet's pedigree was doubly Norman; for the Gordons, though an old Scottish family, are of French extraction; and his father was sprung from those Byrons who came over with the Conqueror. In Doomsday Book the name of Ralf de Burun ranks high among the tenants of land in Notting. hamshire; and in the succeeding reigns, under the title of Lords of Horestan Castle, we find his descendants bolding considerable possessions in Derbyshire, to which afterwards,

noble the blood in his veins, to be destined for the humbler walks of life. (1)

His mother, Miss Gordon, was a small heiress, the only daughter of a Mr. Gordon of Gight; and Captain Byron, his father, was a spendthrift gentleman, who married, as some eloquent Scotch rhymer of the day was obliging enough to prognosticate, for the purpose of

"Squandering the lands of Gight awa."

This indeed, to do him justice, he did so effectually as, in a very short time, to leave his lady with her liberty (a boon which he cheerfully restored), and but 150l. a-year to enjoy it upon. On such an income Mrs. Byron, not able to indulge in many of the extravagances, was likely even to want some of the necessaries, of what is called genteel existence: and to this poverty of his earlier years the passion which Lord Byron subsequently testified for fashion and fine people is to be traced.

Poor Byron's first misfortune, and the one which haunted him most bitterly during after-life, was that twist of the foot at his birth, which occasioned a deformity, singularly enough the characteristic of four of the most remarkable persons of our time-Sir Walter Scott, Marshal Soult, Monsieur de Talleyrand, and the author of Childe Harold!

Our deepest feelings are generally developed by misfortunes; nor is any misfortune so likely to have a lasting influence upon the character as one the sense of which must always be recurring. To the slight deformity he was born with, Lord Byron, even at the earliest age, seems to have been moodily sensible.

in the time of Edward I., were added the lands of Rochdale in Lancashire.

Lord Byron has boasted in his verses of his ancestors having led their vassals from Europe to Palestine in the Holy Wars. The circumstance which his Lordship imagined a warrant for this glory was the existence of some figures in the old panel-work of the chambers at Newstead. But these figures seem to establish no distinct proof of the Byrons ever having fought in the Holy Land. It is certain, however, that they distinguished themselves at the siege of Calais under Edward III., and in their respective wars on the fields of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor.

"I have been told by a gentleman of Glasgow," says Mr. Moore, "that a person who used often to join the nurse of Byron, when they were out with their respective charges, said one day to her, "What a pretty boy is Byron-what a pity he has such a leg!" On hearing this allusion to his infirmity, the child's eyes flashed with anger, and, striking at the woman with a little whip which he held in his hand, he exclaimed impatiently, "Dinna speak of it!"(1)

The taunts of a public school, and the unjust and ungenerous sarcasms of a mother, who in her fits of passion would call the boy "the lame brat," (2) all fostered those sensations which were likely to create a froward and reckless disposition, and inspire into any one, thus afflicted, the daring desire to ques- | tion the mercy and wisdom of a Providence which had, even at his entry into the world, branded him in apparent indignation.

When not quite five years old, young Byron was sent to a day-school at Aberdeen, The terms of this school were (as is usual in Scotland) five shillings aquarter, and the scholar seems to have had the money's | worth of education; for, having staid about a year, he was just able to decipher his letters. He then went through the tutorage of a Mr. Ross and a Mr. Pattison; the latter, as he says, being the son of a shoemaker, but a good scholar, and a rigid Presbyterian from these gentlemen's hands he was at last transmitted to the Grammar-School at Aberdeen, where, to use his own words, he threaded all the classes to the fourth, when he was recalled to England by the demise of his uncle.

wildness and grandeur of mountain scenery, which he afterwards transported to the Alps, the Apennines, and the revered Parnassus :

"He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue; Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face, And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace." (3) At this period too, and an early one it was, we have to date the commencement of that passion, to which, as he said a short time before his death, the greater part of his life and writings were devoted. More precocious than Dante, who was nine years old when he fell in love with Beatrice, Byron says, that he was utterly fond of a little girl, Mary Duff, when he was but eight, with whom he used to sit gravely making love, while her sister Helen played with a doll.

The death of the grandson of the old Lord Byron, in 1794, had now made little Byron the next claimant to the title; and the old Lord's death happening at Newstead Abbey in 1798, Mrs. Byron and her son set out from Aberdeen to the old family place, Mrs. Byron's furniture being sold for 751.

Placed under the hands of a Nottingham quack, of the name of Lavender, the young Lord derived no benefit from his attentions. Subsequently, removed to London, he was put under the care of Dr. Baillie, and also placed at the same time in the school of Dr. Glennie at Dulwich, where he appears to have been more addicted to reading history and poetry, as well as the Scriptures, than is usual with boys of his age,

At this time he was more amiable, in the common acceptation of the word, than at any other period of his life a circumstance which may, perhaps, be owing to the benefit which he was at last deriving from medical assistance; his foot being now so restored as to enable him to put on a common boot; an event which he announced with great pride and grati

land, but to whom he seems to have recurred with all the warmth which ever characterised his earlier impressions.

It was about this period that he first imbibed, in a visit to the Highlands in 1796, that passion for the

(1) Mr. Moore gives frequent instances of his sensitiveness on this subject at different periods, and attributes the pique which his Lordship is now known, even during the best days of their friendship, to have entertained privately against Mr. Rogers, to a supposition that that gentleman had alJuded to his lameness, when a link-boy, on their coming out of the theatre together, exclaimed, "Lord Byron, shall I get

Byron, who had come to consult her as a maiden lady, that she was not only a married woman, but that she was the mother of a son who was lame, who should be in danger of poison before he was of age, and be twice married, the second time to a foreign lady-a prophecy which, in spite of the falsity of the poisoning part of it, seems to have had some înfluence in the durability of his attachment to Madame Guiccioli.

From Dr. Glennie's, Byron was removed to that school where, though many years after him, I found all the recorded recollections of his boyhood. Byron at Harrow was a bustling bullying boy, at the head of all rows against the master or the towns-people, and rather a leader in the sports than distinguished in the studies of the place.

He read a great deal, but his reading was of a desultory kind, and far from the course of school pursuits. Bat, though idle, there seems to have been that in his conduct and his exercises which attracted the attention of the head master, Dr. Drury, who informed the late Lord Carlisle that the young peer had ability which would add lustre to his rank. The talent for which he principally attracted notice was one, which he seems at this time to have possessed, for declamation: indeed, the common idea then was, that though Byron would never have done any thing else, he would most certainly distinguish himself as a capital orator in the House of Lords. And of his powers in this way he gave a remarkable instance.

"The upper part of the school composed declamations," says Dr. Drury, "which, after a revisal by the tutors, were submitted to the master: to him the authors repeated them, that they might be improved in manner and action before their public delivery. I certainly was much pleased with Lord Byron's attitude and gesture, as well as with his composition. All who spoke adhered as usual to the letter of their composition, as, in the earlier part of the speech, did Lord Byron; but to my surprise he suddenly diverged from the written composition, with a boldness and rapidity sufficient to alarm me, lest he should fail in memory as to the conclusion. There was no failure. He came round to the close of his composition without discovering any impediment and irregularity on the whole. I questioned him why he had altered his declamation. He declared he had made no alteration, and did not know, in speaking, that he had deviated from it one letter. I believed him; and, from a knowledge of his temperament, am convinced that, fully impressed with the sense and the substance of the subject, he was hurried on to expressions and colourings more striking than those which his pen bad expressed."

Different extracts have been given from the Poet's note-books, that are interesting in respect to this period of his boyhood.

more rhetorical and martial than poetical. My first verses, that is, English, as exercises, were received but coolly; no one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy. At Harrow, I fought my way very fairly. I lost but one battle out of seven, and the rascal did not win it, but by the unfair treatment of his own boarding-house where we boxed. I never forgave him, and I should be sorry to meet him now, as I am sure we should quarrel. My school friendships were with me passions, for I was always violent. P. Hunter, Curzon, Long, and Tattersall, were my principal friends. Clare, Dorset, Charles Gordon, de Bath, Claridge, and John Wingfield, were my juniors and favourites, whom I spoiled by indulgence. Of all human beings I was perhaps the most attached to poor Wingfield, who died at Coimbra, in 1811, before I returned to England." "Peel (the orator and statesman-that was, or is, or is to be) was my form-fellow, and we were both at the top of our remove-a public school phrase. We were on good terms, but his brother was my intimate friend: there were always great hopes of Peel amongst us all-masters and scholars—and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar he was greatly my superior; as a declaimer and actor I was reckoned at least his equal; as a schoolboy, out of school, I was always in scrapes-and he never; and in school he always knew his lesson, and I rarely-but when I knew it, I knew it nearly as well. In general information, history, etc., I think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my standing."

An interesting anecdote is told of these two lads, redounding to Byron's credit for heroism and sensibility. A boyish tyrant, some few years older, was beating Peel-in a manner which I still remember, under the technical phrase of "holding up." While the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor Peel not very well contented under them, Byron came up to the scene of action, and with a blush of rage, tears in his eyes, and a voice trembling between terror and indignation, asked very humbly if * *** **would be pleased to tell him how many stripes he meant to inflict? "Why," returned the executioner, "you little rascal, what is that to you?" "Because, if you please," said Byron, holding out his arm, "I will take half."

Byron, in addition to his passion for Mary Duff, had, at the age of twelve, been also, according to his own account, enamoured with his young cousin, Miss Parker, who, as he says, inspired his “first dash into poetry." "I have long," he continues, "forgotten the verses; but it would be difficult for me to forget her dark eyes, her long eye-lashes, her completely Greek cast of face and figure. She died about a year or two afterwards, in consequence of a fall, which injured her spine, and induced consump tion." In 1803, he was doomed to another affec