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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 passions (for I was always violent), but I do not know that there is one which has endured (to be sure some have been cut short by death) till now. That with Lord Clare begun one of the earliest, and lasted longest-being only interrupted by distance that I know of. I never 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.

HIS MEETING WITH LORD CLARE IN 1821.

I met him on the road between Imola and Bologna, after not having met for seven or eight years. He was abroad in 1814, and came home just as I set out in 1816. 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 even 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 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.

FRIENDSHIP.

Of all I have ever known, he has always been the least altered in everything from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly 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 from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others, during absence and distance.

FRIENDSHIP.

As to friendship, it is a propensity in which my genius is very limited. I do not know the male human being, except Lord Clare, the friend of my infancy, for whom I feel anything that deserves the name. All my others are men-of-the-world friendships. I did not even feel it for Shelley, however much I admired and esteemed him; so that you see not even vanity could bribe me into it, for, of all men, Shelley thought highest of my talents, and perhaps of my disposition. I will do my duty by my intimates, upon the principle of doing as you would be done by. I have done so, I trust, in most instances. I may be pleased with their conversation-rejoice in their success— -be glad to do them service, or to receive their counsel and assistance in return. But as for friends and friendships, I have (as I already said) named the only remaining male for whom I feel any thing of the kind, excepting, perhaps, Thomas Moore. I have had, and may have still, a thousand friends, as they are called, in life, who are like one's partners in the waltz of this world—not much remembered when the ball is over, though very pleasant for the time. Habit, business, and companionship in pleasure or in pain, are links of a similar kind,

and the same faith in politics is another.-Genoa, March, 1823.

LORD BYRON'S FEELINGS ON LEAVING SCHOOL FOR COLLEGE.

When I first went up to college, it was a new and a heavy-hearted scene for me: firstly, I so much disliked leaving Harrow, that though it was time (I being seventeen), it broke my very rest for the last quarter with counting the days that remained. I always hated Harrow till the last year and a half, but then I liked it. Secondly, I wished to go to Oxford, and not to Cambridge. Thirdly, I was so completely alone in this new world, that it half broke my spirits. My companions were not unsocial, but the contrary— lively, hospitable, of rank and fortune, and gay far beyond my gaiety. I mingled with, and dined, and supped, &c., with them; but, I know not how, it was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy.

HIS FRIENDSHIP FOR LONG, AND THEIR JOINT PURSUITS AT COLLEGE.

How strange are my thoughts!-The reading of the song of Milton, "Sabrina fair,” has brought back upon me-I know not how or why-the happiest, perhaps, days of my life (always excepting, here and there, a Harrow holiday in the two latter summers of my stay there) when living at Cambridge with Edward Noel Long, afterwards of the guards,-who, after having served honourably in the expedition to Copenhagen (of which two or three thousand scoundrels yet survive

HIS FRIENDSHIP FOR LONG.

9

in plight and pay), was drowned early in 1809, on his passage to Lisbon with his regiment in the St. George transport, which was run foul of in the night by another transport. We were rival swimmers-fond of riding, reading, and of conviviality. We had been at Harrow together; but there, at least, his was a less boisterous spirit than mine. I was always cricketing, rebelling, fighting, rowing (from row, not boat-rowing, a different practice), and in all manner of mischiefs; while he was more sedate and polished. At Cambridge-both of Trinity-my spirit rather softened, or his roughened, for we became very great friends. The description of Sabrina's seat reminds me of our rival feats in diving.* Though Cam's is not a very transclucent wave, it was fourteen feet deep, where we used to dive for, and pick up-having thrown them in on purpose-plates, eggs, and even shillings. I remember, in particular, there was the stump of a tree (at least ten or twelve feet deep) in the bed of the river, in a spot where we bathed most commonly, round which I used to cling, and wonder how I came there.

Our evenings we passed in music (he was musical, and played on more than one instrument, flute and violoncello), in which I was audience; and I think that our chief beverage was soda-water. In the day we rode, bathed, and lounged, reading occasionally. We only passed the summer together; Long had gone into the Guards during the year I passed in Notts, away from college. His friendship, and a violent, though pure, love and passion, which held me at the same period, were the then romance of the most romantic period of

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"Sabrina fair,

Listen where thou art sitting,

Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting

The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair," &c.

Long's father wrote to me to write his son's epitaph. I promised, but I had not the heart to complete it. He was such a good amiable being as rarely remains long in the world; with talents and accomplishments, too, to make him the more regretted. Yet although a cheerful companion, he had strange melancholy thoughts sometimes. I remember once that we were going to his uncle's, I think-I went to accompany him to the door merely he told me that the night before he had taken up a pistol, not knowing or examining whether it was loaded or no, and had snapped it at his head, leaving it to chance whether it might or might not be charged! The letter, too, which he wrote me on leaving college to join the Guards, was as melancholy in its tenour as it could well be on such an occasion. But he showed nothing of this in his deportment, being mild and gentle, and yet with much turn for the ludicrous in his disposition. We were both much attached to Harrow, and sometimes made excursions there together from London, to revive our school-boy recollections.—Ravenna Journal, 1821.

:

PORSON.

I remember to have seen Porson at Cambridge, in the hall of our college, and in private parties, but not frequently and I never can recollect him except as drunk or brutal, and generally both: I mean in an evening, for in the hall he dined at the Dean's table, and I at the Vice-master's, so that I was not near him ; and he then and there appeared sober in his demeanour, nor did I ever hear of excess or outrage on his part in public,—commons, college, or chapel; but I have seen him in a private party of undergraduates, many of them freshmen and strangers, take up a poker to one of

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