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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) was as early as 1800. It was the ebullition of a passion for my first cousin, Margaret Parker (daughter and granddaughter 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 eyelashesher completely Greek cast of face and figure! I was then about twelve-she 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. My sister told me, that when she went to see her, shortly before her death, upon accidentally mentioning my name, Margaret coloured through the paleness 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

**I do not recollect scarcely any thing equal to the

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 be 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;
But the boy bore up long, and with a mild
And patent spirit held aloof his fate;
Little he said, and now and then he smiled,
As if to win a part from off the weight

He saw increasing on his father's heart,

With the deep, deadly thought, that they must part.

And o'er him bent his sire, and never raised

His eyes from off his face, but wiped the foam
From his pale lips, and ever on him gazed;

And when the wish'd-for shower at length was come,
And the boy's eyes, which the dull film half glazed,
Brighten'd, and for a moment seem'd to roam,
He squeezed from out a rag some drops of rain
Into his dying child's mouth—but in vain.
The boy expired-the father held the clay,

And look'd upon it long, and when at last
Death left no doubt, and the dead burthen lay
Stiff on his heart, and pulse and hope were past,
He watch'd it wistfully, until away

'Twas borne by the rude wave wherein 't was cast;
Then he himself sunk down all dumb and shivering,
And gave no sign of life, save his limbs quivering.

Don Juan, Canto II.

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 bis own powerful description, the reader will find the account of the loss of the Juno here referred to. * This elegy is in his first (unpublished) volume.

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 rainbow-all beauty and peace.

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My passion had its usual effects upon me-I could not sleep-I could not eat-I 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 Doctor 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 Doctor 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."

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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, Doctor Glennie had to stand no ordinary trial, having visited Geneva in 1817, soon after Lord 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 Doctor 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 Doctor Ewing, by whom, as a relic of genius, it is equally valued. The

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 lustrious 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 epinions 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 fascirated 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?" "

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,

may

Till I was eighteen years old (odd as it seem) I had never read a Review. But while at Harrow, my general information was so great on modera 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 qualities 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 fuency, my turbulence, my voice, my copiousness of declamation, and my actio. I remember that my first declamation astonished him into some unwonted

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 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 lingua, pedibusque fugacibus istis,"

(for he was economical of such) and sudden compliments, before the declaimers at our first rehearsal. My first Harrow verses (that is, English, as exercises), a translation of a chorus from the Prometheus of Eschylus, were received by him but coolly. No one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy.

"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, &c. &c., I think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my standing.

"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 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."

The following extract is from another of his manuscript journals.

"At Harrow I fought my way very fairly. I think I lost but one battle out of seven; and that

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."

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 cloitres."-Contes Moraux.

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 youth of ge

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 Doctor Butler, whom I treated rebelliously, and have been sorry ever since. Doctor 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 Jno. 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."

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

nius. In support of this notion he quotes Beattie, who thus describes his ideal minstrel :

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

To me was pleasing.

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, Æschylus, 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.

**At eight or nine years of age the boy goes to school. From that moment he becomes a stranger in his 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 connexion, as to find himself happier any where than in their company."-Cowper, Letters.

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 :-*

Is there no cause beyond the common claim,
Endear'd to all in childhood's very name?
Ah! sure some stronger impulse vibrates here,
Which whispers, friendship will be doubly dear
To one who thus for kindred hearts must roam,
And seek abroad the love denied at home:
Those hearts, dear Ida, have I found in thee,
A home, a world, a paradise to me.

This early volume, indeed, abounds with the most affectionate tributes to his school-fellows. 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 knew me unalter'd 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 after leaving Harrow, when he encountered in the world any of his old school-fellows, 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,
Advance to claim his friend with honest joy,
My eyes, my heart proclaim'd me still a boy;
The glittering scene, the fluttering groups around,
Were all forgotten when my friend was found.

It will be seen, by the extracts from his memorandum-book, which I have given, that Mr Peel was

* 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;
Yet Virtue will have greater claims
To love, than rank with Vice combined.

And though unequal is thy fate,
Since title deck'd my higher birth,
Yet envy not this gaudy state,
Thine is the pride of modest worth.
Our souls at least congenial meet,

Nor can thy lot my rank disgrace;
Our intercourse is not less sweet
Since worth of rank supplies the place.
November, 1820.

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.

was

While Lord Byron and Mr Peel were at Harrow together, a tyrant some few years older, whose name claimed a right to fag little Peel, which chim (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 mcceeding 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 familyLords Clare and Delaware, 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 Delaware on his list for punishmeat. Byron, hearing of this, came up to him, and said, "Wildman, I find you've got Delaware 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 con

trary, 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 Harness, 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 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."

to say,

"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 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 connexions on your side, and the difference in your 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