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interchange of black eyes and bloody noses, at varions and sundry periods; however, it may | have happened for all that.'»

The annexed anecdotes are characteristic: The boys at Harrow had mutinied, and in their wisdom had resolved to set fire to the scene of all their ills and troubles-the school-room: Byron, however, was against the motion, and by pointing out to the young rebels the names of their fathers on the walls, he prevented the intended conflagration. This early specimen of his power over the passions of his school-fellows, his lordship piqued himself not a little

upon.

Byron long retained a friendship for several of his Harrow school-fellows; Lord Clare was one of his constant correspondents; Scroope DaIvies was also one of his chief companions before his lordship went to the continent; this gentleman and Byron once lost all their money at chicken hazard, in one of the hells of St. James's, and the next morning Davies sent for Bron's pistols to shoot himself with; Byron sent ancte refusing to give them, on the ground that dey would be forfeited as a deodand. This comic es use had the desired effect.

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Byron, whilst living at Newstead during the Harrow vacation, saw and became enamoured of Miss (worth: she is the Mary of his poetry, and his beautiful « Dream» relates to their loves. M- Chaworth was older than his Lordship by a few years, was light and volatile, and though, no doubt, highly flattered by his attachment, yet she treated our poet less as an ardent lover than as a younger brother. She was punctual to the asgnations which took place at a gate dividing the grounds of the Byrons from the Chaworths, and accepted his letters from the confidants; but her answers, it is said, were written with more of the caution of coquetry than the romance of love's young dream; she gave him, however, her picture, but her hand was reserved for another.

It was somewhat remarkable that Lord Byron ani Miss Chaworth should both have been under the guardianship of Mr White. This gentleman particularly wished that his wards should be married together; but Miss C., as young ladies generally do in such circumstances, differed from Im, and was resolved to please herself in the choice of a husband. The celebrated Mr M., mmonly known by the name of Jack M., was at this time quite the rage, and Miss C. was not rabtle enough to conceal the penchant she had this juk-a-dandy; and though Mr W. took Ser from one watering-place to another, still the ver, like an evil spirit, followed, and at last, child 'eing somehow more persuasive than the

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of song, he carried off the lady, to the great grief of Lord Byron. The marriage, however, was not a happy one; the parties soon separated, and Mrs M. afterwards proposed an interview with her former lover, which, by the advice of his sister, he declined.

From Harrow Lord Byron was removed, and entered of Trinity College, Cambridge; there, however, he did not mend his manners, nor hold the sages of antiquity in higher esteem than when under the command of his Reverend tutor at Harrow. He was above studying the poetics, and held the rules of the Stagyrite in as little esteem as in after life he did the invariable principles of the Rev. Mr Bowles. Reading after the fashion of the studious men of Cam was to him a bore, and he held a senior wrangler in the greatest contempt. Persons of real genius are seldom candidates for college prizes, and Byron left « the silver cup for those plodding characters who, perhaps, deserve them, as the guerdon of the unceasing labour necessary to overcome the all but invincible natural dulness of their intellects. Byron, instead of reading what pleased tutors, read what pleased himself, and wrote what could not fail to displease those political weathercocks. He did not admire their system of education, and they, as is the case with most scholars, could admire no other. He took to quizzing them, and no one likes to be laughed at; doctors frowned, and fellows fumed, and Byron at the age of nineteen left the university without a degree.

Among other means which he adopted to show his contempt for academical honours, he kept a young bear in his room for some time, which he told all his friends he was training up for a fellowship; but however much the fellows of Trinity may claim acquaintance with the a ursa major, they were by no means desirous of associating with his lordship's élève.

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When about nineteen years of age, Lord Byron bade adieu to the university, and took up his residence at Newstead Abbey. Here his pursuits were principally those of amusement. others he was extremely fond of the water. his aquatic exercises he had seldom any other companion than a large Newfoundland dog, to try whose sagacity and fidelity he would sometimes fall out of the boat, as if by accident, when the dog would seize him, and drag him ashore. On losing this dog, in the autumn of 1808, he caused a monument to be erected, with an inscription commemorative of its attachment. (See page 532 of this edition.)

The following descriptions of Newstead's hallowed pile will be found interesting:

This abbey was founded in the year 1170, by

Henry II., as a priory of Black Canons, and dedi- forms, the fear into your bosom which is felt by

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the neighbouring peasantry at th 'oud laird's devils.' I have frequently asked the country people near Newstead, what sort of a man his lordship (our Lord Byron) was. The impression of his eccentric but energetic character was evident in the reply He's the devil of a fellow for comical fancies. He flogs the oud laird to nothing; but he's a hearty goodfellow for all that.'»

Walpole, who had visited Newstead, gives, in his usual bitter, sarcastic manner, the following account of it:

« As I returned I saw Newstead and Althorpe; I like both. The former is the very abbey. The great east window of the church remains, and connects with the house; the hall entire, the refectory entire, the cloister untouched, with the ancient cistern of the convent, and their arms on it: it has a private chapel quite perfect. The park, which is still charming, has not been so much unprofaned. The present lord has lost large sums, and paid part in old oaks, five thousand pounds worth of which have been cut near the house. En revanche, he has built two baby forts, to pay his country in castles for damage done to the navy, and planted a handful of Scotch firs, that look like ploughboys dressed in old family liveries for a public day. In the hall is a very good collection of pictures, all animals. The refectory, now the great drawing-room, is full of Byrons: the vaulted roof remaining, but the windows have new dresses making for them by a Venetian tailor.»

cated to the Virgin Mary. It continued in the family of the Byrons until the time of the late lord, who sold it first to Mr Claughton for the sum of 140,000l., and on that gentleman's not being able to fulfil the agreement, and thus paying 20,000l. of a forfeit, it was afterwards sold to another person, and most of the money vested in trustees for the jointure of the Hon. Mrs Byron. The greater part of the edifice still remains. The present possessor, Major Wildman, is, with a genuine Gothic taste, repairing this beautiful specimen of architecture. The late Lord Byron repaired a considerable part of it; but, forgetting the roof, he had turned his attention to the inside, and the consequence was that, in a few years, the rain paying a visit to the apartments, soon destroyed all those elegant devices which his lordship had contrived. His lordship's own study was a neat little apartment, decorated with some good classic busts, a select collection of books, an antique cross, a sword in a gilt case, and, at the end of the room, two finely polished skulls on a pair of light fancy stands. In the garden, likewise, was a great number of these skulls, taken from the burial-ground of the abbey, and piled up together; but afterwards they were recommitted to the earth. A writer, who visited it soon after Lord Byron had sold it, says: In one corner of the servants' hall lay a stone coffin, in which were fencing gloves and foils, and on the walls of the ample but cheerless kitchen was painted in large letters Waste not,-want not.' During the minority of Lord Byron, the abbey This is a careless but happy description of one was in the possession of Lord G--, his hounds, of the noblest mansions in England, and it will and divers colonies of jackdaws, swallows, and now be read with a far deeper interest than starlings. The internal traces of this Goth were when it was written. Walpole saw the seat of swept away; but without, all appeared as rude the Byrons, old, majestic, and venerable; but he and unreclaimed as he could have left it. With saw nothing of that magic beauty which fame the exception of the dog's tomb, a conspicuous sheds over the habitations of genius, and which and elegant object, I do not recollect the slightest now mantles every turret of Newstead Abbey. He trace of culture or improvement. The late lord, saw it when decay was doing its work on the a stern and desperate character, who is never cloister, the refectory, and the chapel, and all mentioned by the neighbouring peasants without its honours seemed mouldering into oblivion. He a significant shake of the head, might have re- could not know that a voice was soon to go forth turned and recognized every thing about him, from those antique cloisters, that should be heard except, perhaps, an additional crop of weeds. through all future ages, and cry, 'Sleep no more There still slept that old pond, into which he is to all the house.' Whatever may be its future said to have hurled his lady in one of his fits of fate, Newstead Abbey must henceforth be a mefury, whence she was rescued by the gardener, a morable abode. Time may shed its wild flowers courageous blade, who was the lord's master, and on the walls, and let the fox in upon the courtchastised him for his barbarity. There still, at yard and the chambers; it may even pass into the end of the garden, in a grove of oak, two the hands of unlettered pride, or plebeian oputowering satyrs, he with his goat and club, and¦lence; but it has been the mansion of a mighty Mrs Satyr with her chubby cloven-footed brat, placed on pedestals at the intersections of the narrow and gloomy pathways, struck for a moment, with their grim visages, and silent shaggy

poet. Its name is associated to glories that cannot perish, and will go down to posterity in one of the proudest pages of our annals.

Lord Byron showed, even in his earliest years,

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that nature had added to the advantages of high descent the richest gifts of genius and of fancy. His own tale is partly told in two lines of Lara:

Cam Hobhouse, esq. (with whom his acquaintance commenced at Cambridge), Lord Byron embarked at Falmouth for Lisbon, and thence proceeded, by the southern provinces of Spain, to the Mediterranean. The objects that he met with as far as Gibraltar seem to have occupied his mind, to the temporary exclusion of his gloomy and misanthropic thoughts; for a letter which he wrote to his mother from thence contains no indication of them; but, on the contrary, much playful description of the scenes

Left by his sire, too young such loss to know, Lord of himself, that heritage of woe.» His first literary adventure and its fate are well remembered. The poems which he published in his minority had, indeed, those faults of conception and diction which are inseparable from juvenile attempts, and in particular might rather be considered as imitative of what had caught the ear and fancy of the youthful author, than as exhi-through which he had passed. At Seville, Lord biting originality of conception and expression. It was like the first essay of the singing-bird, catching at and imitating the notes of its parent, ere habit and time have given the fulness of tone, confidence, and self-possession which render assistance unnecessary. Yet though there were many, and those not the worst judges, who discerned in his « Hours of Idleness» a depth of thought and felicity of expression which promised much at a more mature age, the errors did not escape the critical lash of the « Scotch Reviewers,» who could not resist the opportunity of pouncing mpon a titled poet, of showing off their own wit, I and of seeking to entertain their readers with a flippant article, without much respect to the feelings of the author, or even to the indications of merit which the work displayed. The review was read, and excited mirth; the poems were neglected, the author was irritated, and took his revenge in keen iambics, which, at the same time, proved the injustice of the offending critic and the ripening talents of the bard. Having thus tented his indignation against the reviewers and their readers, and put all the laughter on his side, Lord Byron went abroad, and the controversy was for some years forgotten.

From

Byron lodged in the house of two single ladies, one of whom, however, was about to be married. Though he remained there only three days, she paid him the most particular attentions, and, at their parting, embraced him with great tenderness, cutting off a lock of his hair, and presenting him with one of her own. With this specimen of Spanish female manners, he proceeded to Cadiz, where various incidents occurred to confirm the opinion he had formed at Seville of the Andalusian belles, and which made him leave Cadiz with regret, and determine to return to it. Lord Byron wrote to his mother from Malta, announcing his safety, and again from Previsa, in November. Upon arriving at Yanina, Lord Byron found that Ali Pacha was with his troops in Illyrium, besieging Ibrahim Pacha in Berat; but the vizier having heard that an English nobleman was in his country, had given orders at Yanina to supply him with every kind of accommodation, free of expense. Yanina, Lord Byron went to Tepaleen. Here he was lodged in the palace, and the next day introduced to Ali Pacha, who declared that he knew him to be a man of rank from the smallness of his ears, his curling hair, and his white hands, It was at Newstead, just before his coming of and who sent him a variety of sweetmeats, fruits, age, he had planned his future travels, and his and other luxuries. In going in a Turkish ship orgnal intention included a much larger portion of war, provided for him by Ali Pacha, from Preof the world than that which he afterwards vi- visa, intending to sail for Patras, Lord Byron was sited. He first thought of Persia, to which idea very near lost in but a moderate gale of wind, mleed he for a long time adhered. He after- from the ignorance of the Turkish officers and wards meant to sail for India, and had so far sailors, and was driven on the coast of Suli. An contemplated this project as to write for infor- instance of disinterested hospitality in the chief nation from the Arabic professor at Cambridge, of a Suliote village occurred to Lord Byron, in and to ask his mother to enquire of a friend who consequence of his disasters in the Turkish galhad lived in India, what things would be neces-liot. The honest Albanian, after assisting him ry for his voyage. He formed his plan of tra- in his distress, supplying his wants, and lodging relling upon very different grounds from those him and his suite, refused to receive any remuwhich he afterwards advanced. All men should neration. When Lord Byron pressed him to take ravel at one time or another, he thought, and he money, he said: «I wish you to love me, not to had then no connexions to prevent him; when he pay me." At Yanina, on his return, he was inreturned he might enter into political life, for troduced to Hussein Bey and Mahmout Pacha, which travelling would not incapacitate him, and two young children of Ali Pacha. Subsequently. be wished to judge of men by experience. he visited Smyrna, whence he went in the Salsette frigate to Constantinople.

At length, in July, 1809, in company with John

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On the 3d of May, 1810, while this frigate was lying at anchor in the Dardanelles, Lord Byron, accompanied by Lieutenant Ekenhead, swam the Hellespont from the European shore to the Asiatic about two miles wide. The tide of the Dardanelles runs so strong, that it is impossible either to swim or to sail to any given point. Lord Byron went from the castle to Abydos, and landed on the opposite shore, full three miles below his meditated place of approach. He had a boat in attendance all the way; so that no danger could | be apprehended even if his strength had failed. His lordship records, in one of his minor poems, that he got the ague by the voyage; but it was well known, that when he landed, he was so much exhausted, that he gladly accepted the offer of a Turkish fisherman, and reposed in his hut for several hours; he was then very ill, and as Lieutenant Ekenhead was compelled to go on board his frigate, he was left alone. The Turk had no idea of the rank or consequence of his inmate, but paid him most marked attention. His wife was his nurse, and, at the end of five days, he left the Soon after his arrival, he was summoned to shore, completely recovered. When he was about Newstead, in consequence of the serious illness to embark, the Turk gave him a large loaf, a of his mother; but on reaching the abbey, found cheese, and a skin filled with wine, and then pre- that she had breathed her last. He suffered much sented him with a few praes (about a penny each), from this loss, and from the disappointment of prayed Allah to bless him, and wished him safe not seeing her before her death; and while his home. His lordship made him no return to this, feelings on the subject were still very acute, he more than saying he felt much obliged. But received the intelligence, that a friend, whom he when he arrived at Abydos, he sent over his highly esteemed, had been drowned in the Cam. man Stefano, to the Turk, with an assortment of He had, not long before, heard of the death, at fishing-nets, a fowling piece, a brace of pistols, Coimbra, of a school-fellow, to whom he was and twelve yards of silk to make gowns for his much attached. These three melancholy events, wife. The poor Turk was astonished, and said, occurring within the space of a month, had, nc What a noble return for an act of humanity!» doubt, a powerful effect on Lord Byron's feelings He then formed the resolution of crossing the Towards the termination of his English Bard:" Hellespont, and, in propria persona, thanking his and Scotch Reviewers, the noble author had de lordship. His wife approved of the plan; and heclared, that it was his intention to break off, from had sailed about half way across, when a sudden that period, his newly-formed connexion with squall upset his boat, and the poor Turkish fisher- the Muses, and that, should he return in safety man found a watery grave. Lord Byron was from the Minarets of Constantinople, the much distressed when he heard of the catastrophe, Maidens of Georgia, and the «Sublime Snows and, with all that kindness of heart which was of Mount Caucasus, nothing on earth shoul natural to him, he sent to the widow fifty dol-tempt him to resume the pen. Such resolution lars, and told her he would ever be her friend. This anecdote, so highly honourable to his lordship's memory, is very little known. Lieutenant Hare, who was on the spot at the time, furnished; the particulars, and added, that in the year 1817, Lord Byron, then proceeding to Constantinople, landed at the same spot, and made a handsome present to the widow and her son, who recollected the circumstance, but knew not Lord Byron, his dress and appearance having so altered him.

Morea. At Constantinople, Mr Hobhouse left him to return to England. On losing his companion, Lord Byron went again, and alone, over much of the old track which he had already visited, and studied the scenery and manners, of Greece especially, with the searching eye of a poet and a painter. His mind appeared occasionally to have some tendency towards a recovery from the morbid state of moral apathy which he had previously evinced, and the gratification which he manifested on observing the superiority, in every respect, of England to other countries, proved that patriotism was far from being extinct in his bosom. The embarrassed state of his affairs, at length, induced him to return home, toendeavour to arrange them; and he arrived in the Volage frigate on the 2d of July, 1811, having been absent exactly two years. His health had not suffered by his travels, although it had been interrupted by two sharp fevers; but he had put himself entirely on a vegetable diet, and drank no wine.

It was not until after Lord Byron arrived at Constantinople that he decided not to go on to Persia, but to pass the following summer in the

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are seldom maintained. In February, 1812, the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage › (with the manuscript of which he had presente‹ his friend Mr Dallas) made their appearance, pro ducing an effect upon the public equal to that o any work which had been published within this or the last century.

This poem is perhaps the most original in the English language, both in conception and execu tion. It is no more like Beattie's Minstrel than Paradise Lost-though the former production was in the noble author's mind when first think....... ing of Childe Harold. A great poet, who gives

2

It was

mitted to his conversation, far from finding that the inspired poet sunk into ordinary mortality, felt themselves attached to him, not only by many noble qualities, but by the interest of a mysterious, undefined, and almost painful curiosity.

self up free and confined to the impulses the first to pay warm homage to his matured efd his genius, as Byron did in the better part of forts; while others, who saw in the sentiments of tis singular creation, shows to us a spirit as if Childe Harold much to regret and to censure, wat out from the hands of nature, to range over did not withhold their tribute of applause to the he earth and the societies of men. Even Shak- depth of thought, the power and force of exprespeare himself submits to the shackles of history sion, and the energy of sentiment which animated and society. But here Byron has traversed the the «Pilgrimage.» Thus, as all admired the poem, ↑ whose earth, borne along by the whirlwind of all were prepared to greet the author with that awn spirit. Wherever a forest frowned, or fame which is the poet's best reward. ¦ a temple glittered—there he was privileged to amidst such feelings of admiration that Lord Byend as fight. He suddenly starts up from his ron fully entered on that public stage where, to the editary dream, by the secret fountain of the de- close of his life, he made so distinguished a figure. ert, and descends at once into the tumult of Every thing in his manner, person, and conrupted, or the silence of deserted cities. What-versation tended to maintain the charm which ser actually lived—had perished heretofore-or his genius had flung around him; and those adat had within it a power to kindle passion, wame the materiel of his all-embracing song. There are no unities of time or place to fetter a-and we fly with him from hill-top to hill- | and from tower to tower, over all the solitude Leure, and all the magnificence of art. When It is well known how wide the doors of society past pageants of history seemed too dim and are opened in London to literary merit, even of be would turn to the splendid spectacles a degree far inferior to Lord Byron's, and that it have dignified our own days; and the images is only necessary to be honourably distinguished 3 and conquerors of old gave place to by the public voice to move as a denizen in the that were yet living in sovereignty and first circles. This passport was not necessary to Indeed much of the power which Byron Lord Byron, who possessed the hereditary claims ed was derived from this source. He lived of birth and rank. But the interest which his art of sympathy with the public mind-genius attached to his presence, and to his conses wholly distinct from it sometimes versation, was of a nature far beyond what these a opposition to it sometimes blending hereditary claims could of themselves have con-but, at all times, in all his thoughts ferred, and his reception was enthusiastic beyond aus, bearing a reference to the public any thing imaginable. Lord Byron was not one this spirit needed not to go back into the of those literary men of whom it may be truly said, -hoogh it often did so,-to bring the ob- minuit præsentia famam. A countenance,exquisitely ats love back to earth in more beautiful modeled to the expression of feeling and passion, * The existence he painted was-the present. and exhibiting the remarkable contrast of very is he presented were marked out to him | dark hair and eye-brows, with light and expres* actual regards. It was his to speak of sive eyes, presented to the physiognomist the most great political events which were objects interesting subject for the exercise of his art. 1ssionate and universal sympathy. But The predominating expression was that of deep spoke our own feelings, exalted in and habitual thought, which gave way to the most rapid play of features when he engaged in anguage, and passion. His travels were wast, the self-impelled act of a mind se- interesting discussion; so that a brother poet elf in lonely roaming from all parti- compared them to the sculpture of a beautiful in the society to which it belonged, alabaster vase, only seen to perfection when er obeying the general notion of the lighted up from within. The flashes of mirth, that society. gaiety, indignation, or satirical dislike which freie adications of a bold, powerful, and ori- quently animated Lord Byron's countenance, and which glanced through every line of might, during an evening's conversation, be misHarold, electrified the mass of readers, taken by a stranger for its habitual expression, so easily and so happily was it formed for them and at once upon Lord Byrou's head the for which other men of genius have toiled all; but those who had an opportunity of studyand which they have gained late. He was ing his features for a length of time, and upon ****re-eminent among the literary men of various occasions, both of rest and emotion, ry by general acclamation. Those who knew that their proper language was that of megorously censured his juvenile essays, lancholy. Sometime, shades of this gloom indreaded such another field, were terrupted even his gayest and most happy mo

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