EARL OF CLARE.

From a Drawing.

ONE of the strongest attachments of friendship Lord Byron ever formed was with his old schoolfellow at Harrow, Lord Clare; and though in his moodier hours he distrusted that he had a friend, and sometimes did his own feelings the dishonour to fancy that he had no such predilections left, or that their traces had been lost or obscured in his severe struggles with society, yet these were shewn, with much feeling and affection, upon the occasion of his accidentally meeting with Lord Clare in Italy, after many years of separation, and not long before Byron's last journey to Greece.

In Byron's Diary (1821) he says: "Of all I have ever known, Clare has always been the least altered in every thing, from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me so strongly to him at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions. I do not speak of personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others, during absence and distance."

"I never," again he says, "hear the word' Clare,' without a beating of the heart even now; and I write it with the feelings of 1803, 4, 5, ad infinitum." One of the poems in "Hours of Idleness" is addressed to Lord Clare, beginning:

"Friend of my youth! when young we roved,
Like striplings mutually beloved

With friendship's purest glow,

The bliss which wing'd those rosy hours.
Was such as pleasure seldom showers.
On mortals here below."

After Lord Byron's death nearly all the notes and letters ever addressed to him by his schoolfellows and favourites were found carefully preserved among his papers. Upon one of them was indorsed, "This, and another letter, were written at Harrow by my then, and I hope ever, beloved friend, Lord Clare, when we were both schoolboys; and sent to my study in consequence of some childish misunderstanding

the only

one which ever arose between us. It was of short duration; and I retain this note solely for the purpose of submitting it to his perusal, that we may smile over the recollection of the insignificance of our first and last quarrel." This amiable letter of Lord Clare's is published in the first volume of his "Life and Works," p. 73.

EARL OF CLARE.

How powerfully those feelings of regard for Lord Clare were cherished by Byron, he has thus recorded in his "Detached Thoughts:"-" I met him in the road between Imola and Bologna, after not having met for eight or nine years. This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like rising from the grave, to me. Clare, too, was much agitated-more in appearance than myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me think so. We were obliged to part for our different journeys-he for Rome, I for Pisa- but with the promise to meet again in the spring. We were but five minutes together, and on the public road; but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence which could be weighed against them."

Mr. Moore, dated "A few days ago

They met again. In a letter to Leghorn, June 8th, 1822, he says: my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came over from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to England. As I have always loved him (since I was thirteen, at Harrow,) better than any (male) thing in the world, I need hardly say what a melancholy pleasure it was to see him for a day only; for he was obliged to resume his journey immediately." It is to this visit that the Countess of Guiccioli adverts when she says,

in a letter to Mr. Moore, that "Lord Clare's visit occasioned him extreme delight. He had a great affection for Lord Clare, and was very happy during the short visit that he paid him at Leghorn. The day on which they separated was a melancholy one for Lord Byron. I have a presentiment that I shall never see him more,' he said, and his eyes filled with tears. The same melancholy came over him during the first weeks that succeeded to Lord Clare's departure, whenever his conversation happened to fall upon this friend."

Lord Clare, the friend of Byron, is at present · Governor of Bombay. His father, to whose title he succeeded in 1802, was for nearly twelve years Lord Chancellor of Ireland.