One of the most striking results of the English system of education is, that while in no country are there so many instances of manly friendships early formed and steadily maintained, so in no other country, perhaps, are the feelings towards the parental home so early estranged, or, at the best, feebly cherished. Transplanted as boys are from the domestic circle, at a time of life when the affections are most disposed to cling, it is but natural that they should seek a substitute for the ties of home in those boyish friendships which they form at school, and which, connected as they are with the scenes and events over which youth threw its charm, retain ever after the strongest hold upon their hearts. In Ireland, and I believe also in France, where the system of education is more domestic, a different result is accordingly observable :-the paternal home comes in for its due and natural share of affection, and the growth of friendships, out of this domestic circle, is proportionably diminished. To a youth like Byron, abounding with the most passionate feelings, and finding sympathy with only the ruder parts of his nature at home, the little world of school afforded a vent for his affections, which was sure to call them forth in their most ardent form. Accordingly, the friendships which he contracted, both at school and college, were little less than what he himself describes them, "passions." The want he felt at home of those kindred dispositions, which greeted him among "Ida's social band," is thus strongly described in one of his early poems 3: 14. 1811. On hearing of the loss of his beloved schoolfellow, Lord Byron added the following stanza to the first canto of Childe Harold: "And thou, my friend!—since unavailing woe Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strainHad the sword laid thee with the mighty low, Pride might forbid e'en Friendship to complain: But thus unlaurel'd to descend in vain, By all forgotten, save the lonely breast, And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain, While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest! What hadst thou done to sink so peacefully to rest ?"] 1["We must dissent from this opinion, and, in doing so, we believe we may safely appeal to the personal experience of our readers of all classes. But the observation, even had it been just, might as well have been omitted in a life of Lord Byron, who certainly had no parental home from which his feelings could have been estranged by any possible system of education. The sweet sources of veneration had never flowed for him, and the charities of fraternal intercourse, nature's earliest and best antidotes to selfishness, he had never known."-Quart. Rev. 1831.] ["At eight or nine years of age the boy goes to school From that moment he becomes a stranger in his "Is there no cause beyond the common claim, This early volume, indeed, abounds with the most affectionate tributes to his schoolfellows. Even his expostulations to one of them, who had given him some cause for complaint, are thus tenderly conveyed :— "You knew that my soul, that my heart, my existence, If danger demanded, were wholly your own; You know me unaltered by years or by distance, Devoted to love and to friendship alone. "You knew but away with the vain retrospection, The bond of affection no longer endures. Too late you may droop o'er the fond recollection, And sigh for the friend who was formerly yours." The following description of what he felt in the world any of his old school-fellows, after leaving Harrow, when he encountered falls far short of the scene which actually occurred but a few years before his death in Italy, when, on meeting with his friend, Lord Clare, after a long separation, he was affected almost to tears by the recollections which rushed on him. "If chance some well remember'd face, Some old companion of my early race, It will be seen, by the extracts from his memorandum-book, which I have given, that father's house. The course of parental kindness is interrupted. The smiles of his mother, those tender admonitions, and the solicitous care of both his parents, are no longer before his eyes-year after year he feels himself more detached from them, till at last he is so effectually weaned from the connection, as to find himself happier any where than in their company."- Cowper, Letters.] 3 Even previously to any of these school friendships, he had formed the same sort of romantic attachment to a boy of his own age, the son of one of his tenants at Newstead; and there are two or three of his most juvenile poems, in which he dwells no less upon the inequality than the warmth of this friendship. Thus:"Let Folly smile, to view the names Of thee and me in friendship twined; Since title deck'd my higher birth, HARROW. Mr. Peel was one of his contemporaries at Harrow; and the following interesting anecdote of an occurrence in which both were concerned, has been related to me by a friend of the latter gentleman, in whose words I shall endeavour as nearly as possible to give it. While Lord Byron and Mr. Peel were at Harrow together, a tyrant, some few years older, whose name was **** *, claimed a right to fag little Peel, which claim (whether rightly or wrongly I know not) Peel resisted. His resistance, however, was in vain :***** not only subdued him, but determined also to punish the refractory slave; and proceeded forthwith to put this determination in practice, by inflicting a kind of bastinado on the inner fleshy side of the boy's arm, which, during the operation, was twisted round with some degree of technical skill, to render the pain more acute. While the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor Peel writhing under them, Byron saw and felt for the misery of his friend; and although he knew that he was not strong enough to fight ****** with any hope of success, and that it was dangerous even to approach him, he advanced 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 would take half!" There is a mixture of simplicity and magnanimity in this little trait which is truly heroic; and however we may smile at the friendships of boys, it is but rarely that the friendship of manhood is capable of any thing half so generous. Among his school favourites a great number, it may be observed, were nobles or of noble family-Lords Clare and Delawarr', the Duke of Dorset, and young Wingfield; and that their rank may have had some share in first attracting his regard to them, might appear from a circumstance mentioned to me by one of his school-fellows, who, being monitor one day, had put Lord Delawarr on his list for punishment. Byron 1 [George-John, fifth Earl Delawarr, born October, 1791, succeeded his father, July, 1795. In an unpublished letter of Lord Byron, dated Harrow, Nov. 4. 1802, he says, "Lord Delawarr is considerably younger than me, but the most good-tempered, amiable, clever fellow in the universe: to all which he adds the quality (a good one in the eyes of a woman) of being remarkably handsome. Delawarr and myself are, in a manner, connected; for one of my forefathers in Charles 23 hearing of this, came up to him, and said, Wildman, I find you've got Delawarr on your list-pray don't lick him.”. "Why not?" Why, I don't know - except that he is a brother peer. But pray don't." It is almost needless to add, that his interference, on such grounds, was any thing but successful. One of the few merits, indeed, of public schools is, that they level, in some degree, these artificial distinctions, and that, however the peer may have his revenge in the world afterwards, the young plebeian is, for once, at least, on something like an equality with him. It is true that Lord Byron's high notions of rank were, in his boyish days, so little disguised or softened down, as to draw upon him, at times, the ridicule of his companions; and it was at Dulwich, I think, that from his frequent boast of the superiority of an old English barony over all the later creations of the peerage, he got the nickname among the boys, of "the Old English baron." But it is a mistake to suppose that, either at school or afterwards, he was at all guided in the selection of his friends by aristocratic sympathies. On the contrary, like most very proud persons, he chose his intimates in general from a rank beneath his own, and those boys whom he ranked as friends at school were mostly of this description; while the chief charm that recommended to him his younger favourites was their inferiority to himself in age and strength, which enabled him to indulge his generous pride by taking upon himself, when necessary, the office of their protector. Among those whom he attached to himself by this latter tie, one of the earliest (though he has omitted to mention his name) was William Harness3, who at the time of his entering Harrow was ten years of age, while Byron was fourteen. Young Harness, still lame from an accident of his childhood, and but just recovered from a severe illness, was ill fitted to struggle with the difficulties of a public school; and Byron, one day, seeing him bullied by a boy much older and stronger than himself, interfered and took his part. The next day, as the little fellow was standing alone, Byron came to him and said, " Harness, if any one bullies you, tell me, and I'll thrash him, if I can." The young champion kept the First's time, married into their family."- See BYRONIANA.] 2 [George-John-Frederick, fourth Duke of Dorset, born Nov. 1793. This amiable nobleman was killed by a fall from his horse, while hunting near Dublin, Feb. 1815. See post, Letter, No. 217.] 3 [Mr. Harness is now minister of Regent Square Church. He has published "Sermons on the Sacrament," the "Connexion of Christianity with Happiness," &c.] his word, and they were from this time, notwithstanding the difference of their ages, inseparable friends. A coolness, however, subsequently arose between them, to which and to the juvenile friendship it interrupted, Lord Byron, in a letter addressed to Harness six years afterwards, alludes with so much kindly feeling, so much delicacy and frankness, that I am tempted to anticipate the date of the letter, and give an extract from it here. "We both seem perfectly to recollect, with a mixture of pleasure and regret, the hours we once passed together, and I assure you, most sincerely, they are numbered among the happiest of my brief chronicle of enjoyment. I am now getting into years, that is to say, I was twenty a month ago, and another year will send me into the world to run my career of folly with the rest. I was then just fourteen,-you were almost the first of my Harrow friends, certainly the first in my esteem, if not in date; but an absence from Harrow for some time, shortly after, and new connections on your side, and the difference in our conduct (an advantage decidedly in your favour) from that turbulent and riotous disposition of mine, which impelled me into every species of mischief,-all these circumstances combined to destroy an intimacy, which affection urged me to continue, and memory compels me to regret. But there is not a circumstance attending that period, hardly a sentence we exchanged, which is not impressed on my mind at this moment. I need not say more,-this assurance alone must convince you, had I considered them as trivial, they would have been less indelible. How well I recollect the perusal of your 'first flights!' There is another circumstance you do not know ;-the first lines I ever attempted at Harrow were addressed to you. You were to have seen them; but Sinclair had the copy in his possession when we went home; and, on our return, we were strangers. They were destroyed, and certainly no great loss; but you will perceive from this circumstance my opinions at an age when we cannot be hypocrites. "I have dwelt longer on this theme than I intended, and I shall now conclude with what I ought to have begun. We were once friends,-nay, we have always been so, for our separation was the effect of chance, not of dissension. I do not know how far our destinations in life may throw us together, but if opportunity and inclination allow you to waste a thought on such a hare-brained being as myself, you will find me at least sincere, and not so bigoted to my faults as to involve others in the consequences. Will you sometimes write to me? I do not ask it often; and, if we meet, let us be what we should be, and what we were.” Of the tenaciousness with which, as we see in this letter, he clung to all the impressions of his youth, there can be no stronger proof than the very interesting fact, that, while so little of his own boyish correspondence has been preserved, there were found among his papers almost all the notes and letters which his principal school favourites, even the youngest, had ever addressed to him; and, in some cases, where the youthful writers had omitted to date their scrawls, his faithful memory had, at an interval of years after, supplied the deficiency. Among these memorials, so fondly treasured by him, there is one which it would be unjust not to cite, as well on account of the manly spirit that dawns through its own childish language, as for the sake of the tender and amiable feeling which, it will be seen, the re-perusal of it, in other days, awakened in Byron : : "TO THE LORD BYRON, &c. &c. "Harrow on the Hill, July 28. 1805. "Since you have been so unusually unkind to me, in calling me names whenever you meet me, of late, I must beg an explanation, wishing to know whether you choose to be as good friends with me as ever. I must own that, for this last month, you have entirely cut me,-for, I suppose, your new cronies. But think not that I will (because you choose to take into your head some whim or other) be always going up to you, nor do, as I observe certain other fellows doing, to regain your friendship; nor think that I am your friend either through interest, or because you are bigger and older than I am. No,-it never was so, nor ever shall be so. I was only your friend, and am so still,—unless you go on in this way, calling me names whenever you see me. I am sure you may easily perceive I do not like it; therefore, why should you do it, unless you wish that I should no longer be your friend? And why should I be so, if you treat me unkindly? I have no interest in being so. Though you do not let the boys bully me, yet if you treat me unkindly, that is to me a great deal worse. "I am no hypocrite, Byron, nor will I, for your pleasure, ever suffer you to call me names, if you wish me to be your friend. If not, I cannot help it, I am sure no one can say that I will cringe to regain a friendship that you have rejected. Why should I do so? Am I not your equal? Therefore, what interest can I have in doing so? When we meet again in the world, (that is, if you HARROW. 66 "BYRON." In a letter, dated two years afterwards, from the same boy, there occurs the following characteristic trait :-" I think, by your last letter, that you are very much piqued with most of your friends; and, if I am not much mistaken you are a little piqued with me. In one part you say, 'There is little or no doubt a few years, or months, will render us as politely indifferent to each other as if we had never passed a portion of our time together.' Indeed Byron, you wrong me, and I have no doubt—at least, I hope -you wrong yourself." As that propensity to self-delineation, which so strongly pervades his maturer works is, to the full, as predominant in his early productions, there needs no better record of his mode of life, as a school-boy, than what these fondly circumstantial effu 1 There are, in other letters of the same writer, some curious proofs of the passionate and jealous sensibility of Byron. From one of them, for instance, we collect that he had taken offence at his young friend's addressing him "my dear Byron," instead of "my dearest ;" and from another, that his jealousy had been awakened by some expressions of regret which his correspondent had expressed at the departure of Lord John Russell for Spain: "You tell me," says the young letter-writer, "that you never knew me in such an agitation as I was when I wrote my last letter; and do you not think I had reason to be so? I received a letter from you on Saturday, telling me you were going abroad for six years in March, and on Sunday John Russell set off for Spain. Was not that sufficient to make me rather melancholy? But how | 25 sions supply. Thus the sports he delighted and excelled in are enumerated: "Yet when confinement's lingering hour was done, Our sports, our studies, and our souls were one: Together we impell'd the flying ball, Together join'd in cricket's manly toil, All, all that brothers should be, but the name.' with some of the neighbouring farmers—an The danger which he incurred in a fight event well remembered by some of his school-fellows—is thus commemorated : "Still I remember, in the factious strife, The rustic's musket aim'd against my life; Some feud, it appears, had arisen on the subject of the cricket-ground, between these "clods" (as in school-language they are called) and the boys, and one or two skirmishes had previously taken place. But the engagement here recorded was accidentally brought on by the breaking up of school and the dismissal of the volunteers from drill, both happening, on that occasion, at the same hour. This circumstance accounts for the use of the musket, the butt-end of which was aimed at Byron's head, and would have felled him to the ground, but for the interposition of his friend Tatersal, a lively, high-spirited boy, whom he addresses here under the name of Davus. Notwithstanding these general habits of play and idleness, which might seem to indicate a certain absence of reflection and feeling, there were moments when the youthful poet would retire thoughtfully within can you possibly imagine that I was more agitated on John Russell's account, who is gone for a few months, and from whom I shall hear constantly, than at your going for six years to travel over most part of the world, when I shall hardly ever hear from you, and perhaps may never see you again? "It has very much hurt me your telling me that you might be excused if you felt rather jealous at my expressing more sorrow for the departure of the friend who was with me, than of that one who was absent. It is quite impossible you can think I am more sorry for John's absence than I shall be for yours; I shall therefore finish the subject." 2 [The Rev. John Cecil Tatersal, B. A. of Christ Church, Oxford. He died, Dec. 1812, at Hall's-Place, Kent, in his twenty-fourth year.] himself, and give way to moods of musing uncongenial with the usual cheerfulness of his age. They show a tomb in the churchyard at Harrow, commanding a view over Windsor, which was so well known to be his favourite resting-place, that the boys called it "Byron's tomb;" and here, they say, he used to sit for hours wrapt up in thought, brooding lonelily over the first stirrings of passion and genius in his soul, and occasionally, perhaps, indulging in those bright forethoughts of fame, under the influence of which, when little more than fifteen years of age, he wrote these remark able lines: "My epitaph shall be my name alone; If that with honour fail to crown iny clay, Oh may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot, By that remember'd, or with that forgot." In the autumn of 1802, he passed a short time with his mother at Bath, and entered, rather prematurely, into some of the gaieties of the place. At a masquerade given by Lady Riddel, he appeared in the character of a Turkish boy, -a sort of anticipation, both in beauty and costume, of his own young Selim, in "The Bride." On his entering into the house, some person in the crowd attempted to snatch the diamond crescent from his turban, but was prevented by the prompt interposition of one of the party. The lady who mentioned to me this circumstance, and who was well acquainted with Mrs. Byron at that period, adds the following remark in the communication with which she has favoured me:-" At Bath I saw a good deal of Lord Byron,—his mother frequently sent for me to take tea with her. He was always very pleasant and droll, and, when conversing about absent friends, showed a slight turn for satire, which after-years, as is well known, gave a finer edge to." We come now to an event in his life which, according to his own deliberate per 1 To this tomb he thus refers in the "Childish Recollections," as printed in his first unpublished volume: "Oft when, oppress'd with sad, foreboding gloom, I sat reclin'd upon our favourite tomb." 2 ["That this affair gave a colour to all his future life we do not in the slightest degree believe. It was his own mind that gave the colour to the affair. It was his disposition to aim always at unattainable things. If he had married this idol, he would very soon have drawn the same conclusion respecting her, which he drew respecting all the objects of his more successful pursuit :— 'Tis an old lesson; Time approves it true, And they who know it best deplore it most; When all is won that all desire to woo, The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost.'"— Westminster Rev.] 3 ["Neither this nor a thousand other instances - beg suasion, exercised a lasting and paramount influence over the whole of his subsequent character and career. It was in the year 1803 that his heart, already twice, as we have seen, possessed with the childish notion that it loved, conceived an attachment which -young as he was, even then, for such a feeling-sunk so deep into his mind as to give a colour to all his future life. That unsuccessful loves are generally the most lasting, is a truth, however sad, which unluckily did not require this instance to confirm it.3 To the same cause, I fear, must be traced the perfect innocence and romance which distinguish this very early attachment to Miss Chaworth from the many others that succeeded, without effacing it in his heart ;-making it the only one whose details can be entered into with safety, or whose results, however darkening their influence on himself, can be dwelt upon with pleasurable interest by others. On leaving Bath, Mrs. Byron took up her abode, in lodgings, at Nottingham, — Newstead Abbey being at that time let to Lord Grey de Ruthen, and during the Harrow vacations of this year, she was joined there by her son. So attached was he to Newstead, that even to be in its neighbourhood was a delight to him; and, before he became acquainted with Lord Grey, he used sometimes to sleep, for a night, at the small house near the gate, which is still known by the name of "The Hut."4 An intimacy, however, soon sprung up between him and his noble tenant, and an apartment in the abbey was from thenceforth always at his service. To the family of Miss Chaworth, who resided at Annesley, in the immediate neighbourhood of Newstead, he had been made known, some time before, in London, and now renewed his acquaintance with them. The young heiress herself combined with the many worldly advantages that encircled ging Mr. Moore's pardon - - can confirm the truth of any such senseless assertion. If unsuccessful, mean unrequited loves which here they manifestly must do— then all observation and all experience show that generally they are transient. It must be so. It is altogether unnatural to cling hopelessly to any passion of love or hate. It must die. If it lived long intensely, it would kill the soul of the sufferer. If it live long languidly, then we must not call it lasting; for languor is one thing and passion is another: and what right to the name of passion has a vague, aimless feeling, that now and then, to the touch of some accidental association, lifts its head up from sleep, and then lays it down again on the pillow of oblivion ?" - WILSON.] 4 I find this circumstance, of his having occasionally slept at the Hut, though asserted by one of the old servants, much doubted by others. |