DULWICH. may have had some share, perhaps, in suggesting that curious research through all the various Accounts of Shipwrecks upon record, by which he prepared himself to depict with such power a scene of the same description in Don Juan. The following affecting incident, mentioned by the author of this pamphlet, has been adopted, it will be seen, with but little change either of phrase or circumstance, by the poet : "Of those who were not immediately near me I knew little, unless by their cries. Some struggled hard, and died in great agony; but it was not always those whose strength was most impaired that died the easiest, though, in some cases, it might have been so. I particularly remember the following instances. Mr. Wade's servant, a stout and healthy boy, died early and almost without a groan; while another of the same age, but of a less promising appearance, held out much longer. The fate of these unfortunate boys differed also in another respect highly deserving of notice. Their fathers were both in the foretop when the lads were taken ill. The father of Mr. Wade's boy hearing of his son's illness, answered with indifference, that he could do nothing for him,' and left him to his fate. The other, when the accounts reached him, hurried down, and watching for a favourable moment, crawled on all-fours along the weather gunwale to his son, who was in the mizen rigging. By that time, only three or four planks of the quarter-deck remained, just over the weather-quarter gallery; and to this spot the unhappy man led his son, making him fast to the rail to prevent his being washed away. Whenever the boy was seized with a fit of retching, the 1 The following is Lord Byron's version of this touching narrative; and it will be felt, I think, by every reader, that this is one of the instances in which poetry must be content to yield the palm to prose. There is a pathos in the last sentences of the seaman's recital, which the artifices of metre and rhyme were sure to disturb, and which, indeed, no verses, however beautiful, could half so naturally and powerfully express : — "There were two fathers in this ghastly crew, And with them their two sons, of whom the one Was more robust and hardy to the view, But he died early; and when he was gone, His nearest messmate told his sire, who threw One glance on him, and said, Heaven's will be done, I can do nothing,' and he saw him thrown Into the deep without a tear or groan. The other father had a weaklier child, Of a soft cheek, and aspect delicate; He saw increasing on his father's heart, 17 father lifted him up and wiped the foam from his lips; and, if a shower came, he made him open his mouth to receive the drops, or gently squeezed them into it from a rag. In this affecting situation both remained four or five days, till the boy expired. The unfortunate parent, as if unwilling to believe the fact, then raised the body, gazed wistfully at it, and, when he could no longer entertain any doubt, watched it in silence till it was carried off by the sea; then, wrapping himself in a piece of canvass, sunk down and rose no more; though he must have lived two days longer, as we judged from the quivering of his limbs, when a wave broke over him."1 66 was as It was probably during one of the vacations of this year, that the boyish love for his young cousin, Miss Parker, to which he attributes the glory of having first inspired him with poetry, took possession of his fancy. "My first dash into poetry," he says, early as 1800. It was the ebullition of a passion for my first cousin, Margaret Parker (daughter and grand-daughter of the two Admirals Parker), one of the most beautiful of evanescent beings. I have long forgotten the verses, but it would be difficult for me to forget her- her dark eyes - her long eye-lashes - her completely Greek cast of face and figure! I was then about twelveshe rather older, perhaps a year. She died about a year or two afterwards, in consequence of a fall, which injured her spine, and induced consumption. Her sister Augusta (by some thought still more beautiful) died of the same malady; and it was, indeed, in attending her, that Margaret met with the accident which occasioned her own death. "And o'er him bent his sire, and never raised His eyes from off his face, but wiped the foam And when the wish'd-for shower at length was come, Brighten'd, and for a moment seem'd to roam, "The boy expired-the father held the clay, And look'd upon it long, and when at last 'Twas borne by the rude wave wherein 'twas cast: Then he himself sunk down all dumb and shivering, And gave no sign of life, save his limbs quivering." DON JUAN, Canto 11. In the collection of " Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea," to which Lord Byron so skilfully had recourse for the technical knowledge and facts out of which he has composed his own powerful description, the reader will find the account of the loss of the Juno here referred to. C My sister told me, that when she went to see her, shortly before her death, upon accidentally mentioning my name, Margaret coloured through the paléness of mortality to the eyes, to the great astonishment of my sister, who (residing with her grandmother, Lady Holderness, and seeing but little of me, for family reasons), knew nothing of our attachment, nor could conceive why my name should affect her at such a time. I knew nothing of her illness, being at Harrow and in the country, till she was gone. Some years after, I made an attempt at an elegy – a very dull one. ? "I do not recollect scarcely any thing equal to the transparent beauty of my cousin, or to the sweetness of her temper, during the short period of our intimacy. She looked as if she had been made out of a rainbowall beauty and peace. "My passion had its usual effects upon me-I could not sleep-I could not eatI could not rest: and although I had reason to know that she loved me, it was the texture of my life to think of the time which must elapse before we could meet again, being usually about twelve hours of separation! But I was a fool then, and am not much wiser now.' He had been nearly two years under the tuition of Dr. Glennie, when his mother, discontented at the slowness of his progress -though being, herself, as we have seen, the principal cause of it-entreated so urgently of Lord Carlisle to have him removed to a public school, that her wish was at length acceded to; and "accordingly," says Dr. Glennie, "to Harrow he went, as little prepared as it is natural to suppose from two years of elementary instruction, thwarted by every art that could estrange the mind of youth from preceptor, from school, and from all serious study." This gentleman saw but little of Lord Byron after he left his care; but, from the manner in which both he and Mrs. Glennie spoke of their early charge, it was evident that his subsequent career had been watched by them with interest; that they had seen even his errors through the softening medium of their first feeling towards him, and had never, in his most irregular aberrations, lost the traces of those fine qualities which they had loved and admired in him when a child. Of the constancy, too, of this feeling, Dr. Glennie had to stand no ordinary trial, having visited Geneva in 1817, soon after Lord 1 [This lady, daughter of M. Doublette, a Dutch gentleman, was married at the Hague, in 1743, to Robert D'Arcy, fourth Earl of Holderness. Upon his death, in 1778, the earldom became extinct, and what remained of Byron had left it, when the private character of the poet was in the very crisis of its unpopularity, and when, among those friends who knew that Dr. Glennie had once been his tutor, it was made a frequent subject of banter with this gentleman that he had not more strictly disciplined his pupil, or, to use their own words, "made a better boy of him." About the time when young Byron was removed, for his education, to London, his nurse May Gray left the service of Mrs. Byron and returned to her native country, where she died about three years since. She had married respectably, and in one of her last illnesses was attended professionally by Dr. Ewing of Aberdeen, who, having been always an enthusiastic admirer of Lord Byron, was no less surprised than delighted to find that the person under his care had for so many years been an attendant on his favourite poet. With avidity, as may be supposed, he noted down from the lips of his patient all the particulars she could remember of his Lordship's early days; and it is to the communications with which this gentleman has favoured me, that I am indebted for many of the anecdotes of that period which I have related. As a mark of gratitude for her attention to him, Byron had, in parting with May Gray, presented her with his watch, -the first of which he had ever been possessor. This watch the faithful nurse preserved fondly through life, and, when she died, it was given by her husband to Dr. Ewing, by whom, as a relic of genius, it is equally valued. The affectionate boy had also presented her with a full-length miniature of himself, which was painted by Kay of Edinburgh, in the year 1795, and which represents him standing with a bow and arrows in his hand, and a profusion of hair falling over his shoulders. This curious little drawing has likewise passed into the possession of Dr. Ewing. The same thoughtful gratitude was evinced by Byron towards the sister of this woman, his first nurse, to whom he wrote some years after he left Scotland, in the most cordial terms, making inquiries of her welfare, and informing her, with much joy, that he had at last got his foot so far restored as to be able to put on a common boot, for which he had long anxiously wished, and which he was sure would give her great pleasure." “ an event his estate, together with the barony of Conyers, descended to his only daughter, the first wife of the Poet's father. Lady Holderness died in London, October, 1801, aged eighty.] 2 [See Works, p. 376.] HARROW. In the summer of the year 1801 he accompanied his mother to Cheltenham, and the account which he himself gives of his sensations at that period1 shows at what an early age those feelings that lead to poetry had unfolded themselves in his heart. A boy, gazing with emotion on the hills at sunset, because they remind him of the mountains among which he passed his childhood, is already, in heart and imagination, a poet. It was during their stay at Cheltenham that a fortune-teller, whom his mother consulted, pronounced a prediction concerning him which, for some time, left a strong impression on his mind. Mrs. Byron had, it seems, in her first visit to this person, (who, if I mistake not, was the celebrated fortuneteller, Mrs. Williams,) endeavoured to pass herself off as a maiden lady. The sibyl, however, was not so easily deceived; she pronounced her wise consulter to be not only a married woman, but the mother of a son who was lame, and to whom, among other events which she read in the stars, it was predestined that his life should be in danger from poison before he was of age, and that he should be twice married,—the second time, to a foreign lady. About two years afterwards he himself mentioned these particulars to the person from whom I heard the story, and said that the thought of the first part of the prophecy very often occurred to him. The latter part, however, seems to have been the nearer guess of the two. CHAPTER III.. 1801-1805. HARROW. — ANECDOTES of SCHOOL LIFE. 19 leader in all the sports, schemes, and mischief of the school. For a general notion of his dispositions and capacities at this period, we could not have recourse to a more trustworthy_or valuable authority than that of the Rev. Dr. Drury, who was at this time head master of the school, and to whom Lord Byron has left on record a tribute of affection and respect, which, like the reverential regard of Dryden for Dr. Busby, will long associate together honourably the names of the poet and the master. From this venerable scholar I have received the following brief but important statement of the impressions which his early intercourse with the young noble left upon him :— "Mr. Hanson, Lord Byron's solicitor, consigned him to my care at the age of 13, with remarks, that his education had been neglected; that he was ill prepared for a public school, but that he thought there was a cleverness about him. After his departure I took my young disciple into my study, and endeavoured to bring him forward by enquiries as to his former amusements, employments, and associates, but with little or no effect; and I soon found that a wild mountain colt had been submitted to my management. But there was mind in his eye. In the first place, it was necessary to attach him to an elder boy, in order to familiarise him with the objects before him, and with some parts of the system in which he was to move. But the information he received from his conductor gave him no pleasure, when he heard of the advances of some in the school, much younger than himself, and conceived by his own deficiency that he should be degraded, and humbled, BOYISH FRIENDSHIPS.- PEEL. GEORGE by being placed below them. This I dis SINCLAIR. -CLAYTON,― LORD CLARE. WILDMAN.—WILLIAM HARNESS.-EARLY covered, and having committed him to the care of one of the masters, as his tutor, I assured him he should not be placed till, by YARD.-BYRON'S TOMB.-SUMMER HOLI- diligence, he might rank with those of his DAYS.-BATH.-NOTTINGHAM AND ANNES LEY.-MISS CHAWORTH.-SOUTHWELL. To a shy disposition, such as Byron's was in his youth-and such as, to a certain degree, it continued all his life-the transition from a quiet establishment, like that of Dulwich Grove, to the bustle of a great public school, was sufficiently trying. Accordingly, we find from his own account, that, for the first year and a half, he "hated Harrow." The activity, however, and sociableness of his nature soon conquered this repugnance; and, from being, as he himself says, unpopular boy," he rose at length to be a 1 See page 8. 66 a most own age. He was pleased with this assurance, and felt himself on easier terms with his associates ;- -for a degree of shyness hung about him for some time. His manner and temper soon convinced me, that he might be led by a silken string to a point, rather than by a cable ;-on that principle I acted. After some continuance at Harrow, and when the powers of his mind had begun to expand, the late Lord Carlisle, his relation, desired to see me in town; -I waited on his Lordship. His object was to inform me of Lord Byron's expectations of property when he came of age, which he represented as contracted, and to inquire respecting his abilities. On the former circumstance I made no remark; as to the latter, I replied, He has talents, my Lord, which will add lustre to his rank. 'Indeed!!!' said his Lordship, with a degree of surprise, that, according to my feeling, did not express in it all the satisfaction I expected. "The circumstance to which you allude, as to his declamatory powers, was as follows. The upper part of the school composed declamations, 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, gesture, and delivery, as well as with his composition. All who spoke on that day adhered, as usual, to the letter of their composition; as, in the earlier part of his delivery, 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 substance of the subject, he was hurried on to expressions and colourings more striking than what his pen had expressed." In communicating to me these recollections of his illustrious pupil, Dr. Drury has added a circumstance which shows how strongly, even in all the pride of his fame, that awe with which he had once regarded the opinions of his old master still hung around the poet's sensitive mind: "After my retreat from Harrow, I received from him two very affectionate letters. In my occasional visits subsequently to London, when he had fascinated the public with his productions, I demanded of him, why, as in duty bound, he had sent none to me? Because,' said he, you are the only man I never wish to read them :'-but, in a few moments, he added- What, do you think of the Corsair ?"" [Here on Sir Walter Scott's copy of Byron's Life is the following MS. note:-"Blockheads never can find out how folks cleverer than themselves came by their information. They never know what is done at dressingtime, meal-time even-or in how few minutes they can get at the sense of many pages."] 2 For the display of his declamatory powers, on the speech-days, he selected always the most vehement passages, such as the speech of Zanga over the body of I shall now lay before the reader such notices of his school-life as I find scattered through the various note-books he has left behind. Coming, as they do, from his own pen, it is needless to add, that they afford the liveliest and best records of this period that can be furnished. "Till I was eighteen years old (odd as it may seem) I had never read a review. But while at Harrow, my general information was so great on modern topics as to induce a suspicion that I could only collect so much information from Reviews, because I was never seen reading', but always idle, and in mischief, or at play. The truth is, that I read eating, read in bed, read when no one else read, and had read all sorts of reading since I was five years old, and yet never met with a Review, which is the only reason I know of why I should not have read them. But it is true; for I remember when Hunter and Curzon, in 1804, told me this opinion at Harrow, I made them laugh by my ludicrous astonishment in asking them What is a Review?' To be sure, they were then less common. In three years more, I was better acquainted with that same; but the first I ever read was in 1806-7. "At school I was (as I have said) remarked for the extent and readiness of my general information; but in all other respects idle, capable of great sudden exertions, (such as thirty or forty Greek hexameters, of course with such prosody as it pleased God,) but of few continuous drudgeries. My qua lities were much more oratorical and martial than poetical; and Dr. Drury, my grand patron, (our head master,) had a great notion that I should turn out an orator, from my fluency, my turbulence, my voice, my copiousness of declamation, and my action. I remember that my first declamation astonished him into some unwonted (for he was economical of such) and sudden compliments, before the declaimers at our first rehearsal, My first Harrow versés, (that is, English, as exercises, a translation of a chorus from the Prometheus of Æschylus,) were received by him but coolly. No one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy. "Peel, the orator and statesman3, (' that was, or is, or is to be,') was my form-fellow, Alonzo, and Lear's address to the storm. On one of these public occasions, when it was arranged that he should take the part of Drances, and young Peel that of Turnus, Lord Byron suddenly changed his mind, and preferred the speech of Latinus, fearing, it was supposed, some ridicule from the inappropriate taunt of Turnus, "Ventosâ in linguâ, pedibusque fugacibus istis." 3 [Now the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel, 1838.] HARROW. 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, &c. &c., I think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my standing. 66 The prodigy of our school-days was George Sinclair (son of Sir John); he made exercises for half the school (literally), verses at will, and themes without it. *** He was a friend of mine, and in the same remove, and used at times to beg me to let him do my exercise,—a request always most readily accorded upon a pinch, or when I wanted to do something else, which was usually once an hour. On the other hand, he was pacific and I savage; so I fought for him, or thrashed others for him, or thrashed himself to make him thrash others when it was necessary, as a point of honour and stature, that he should so chastise; -or we talked politics, for he was a great politician, and were very good friends. I have some of his letters, written to me from school, still.? "Clayton was another school-monster of learning, and talent, and hope; but what has become of him I do not know. He was certainly a genius. "My school friendships were with me passions3, (for I was always violent,) but I 1 [Now (1838) Sir George Sinclair, M. P. for Caithness: he succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father, the well known president of the board of agriculture, &c. &c., in December, 1832.] 2 His letters to Mr. Sinclair, in return, are unluckily lost, one of them, as this gentleman tells me, having been highly characteristic of the jealous sensitiveness of his noble schoolfellow, being written under the impression of some ideal slight, and beginning, angrily, "Sir." 3 On a leaf of one of his note-books, dated 1808, I find the following passage from Marmontel, which no doubt struck him as applicable to the enthusiasm of his own youthful friendships: - L'amitié, qui dans le monde est à peine un sentiment, est une passion dans les cloîtres." -Contes Morauz. 4 [John Fitzgibbon, second Earl of Clare, born June 2. 1792. His father, whom he succeeded in 1802, was for many years Lord Chancellor of Ireland.] Mr. D'Israeli, in his ingenious work "On the Literary Character," has given it as his opinion, that a disinclination to athletic sports and exercises will be, in general, found among the peculiarities which mark a youthful genius. In support of this notion he quotes Beattie, who thus describes his ideal minstrel : 21 The following extract is from another of his manuscript journals: 5 "At Harrow, I fought my way very fairly. I think I lost but one battle out of seven; and that was to H-;- and the rascal did not win it, but by the unfair treatment of his own boarding-house, where we boxed: I had not even a second. I never forgave him; and I should be sorry to meet him now, as I am sure we should quarrel. My most memorable combats were with Morgan, Rice, Rainsford, and Lord Jocelyn, but we were always friendly afterwards. I was a most unpopular boy, but led latterly, and have retained many of my school friendships, and all my dislikes-except to Dr. Butler, whom I treated rebelliously, and have been sorry ever since. Dr. Drury, whom I plagued sufficiently too, was the best, the kindest, (and yet strict, too,) friend I ever had-and I look upon him still as a father. "P. Hunter, Curzon, Long, and Tatersall, were my principal friends. Clare, Dorset, C. Gordon, De Bath, Claridge, and Jo Wingfield, were my juniors and favourites, whom I spoilt by indulgence. Of all human beings, I was, perhaps, at one time, the most attached to poor Wingfield, who died at Coimbra, 1811, before I returned to England.”6 "Concourse, and noise, and toil, he ever fled, Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray Of squabbling imps, but to the forest sped." His highest authority, however, is Milton, who says of himself, "When I was yet a child, no childish play Such general rules, however, are as little applicable to the dispositions of men of genius as to their powers. If, in the instances which Mr. D'Israeli adduces, an indisposition to bodily exertion was manifested, as many others may be cited in which the directly opposite propensity was remarkable. In war, the most turbulent of exercises, Eschylus, Dante, Camoens, and a long list of other poets, distinguished themselves; and, though it may be granted that Horace was a bad rider, and Virgil no tennis-player, yet, on the other hand, Dante was, we know, a falconer as well as swordsman; Tasso, expert both as swordsman and dancer; Alfieri, a great rider; Klopstock, a skaiter; Cowper, famous, in his youth, at cricket and foot-ball, and Lord Byron, pre-eminent in all sorts of exercises. 6 [The Hon. John Wingfield, of the Coldstream guards, brother to Lord Powerscourt. He died of a fever, May |