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insult to the boy, he appeared before his nurse in a
violent rage.
"Well, my little hero," she asked,
66 'what's the matter with you now?" Upon which the
child answered, that "this old woman had put him
in a most terrible passion-that he could not bear the
sight of her," &c. &c.—and then broke out into the
following doggerel, which he repeated over and over,
as if delighted with the vent he had found for his
rage:-

In Nottingham county there lives at Swan Green,
As curst an old lady as ever was seen;

And when she does die, which I hope will be soon,
She firmly believes she will go to the moon.

It is possible that these rhymes may have been caught
up at second-hand; and he himself, as will presently
be seen,
dated his "first dash into poetry," as he calls
it, a year later :-but the anecdote altogether, as
containing some early dawnings of character, appeared
to me worth preserving.

The small income of Mrs Byron received at this time the addition,-most seasonable, no doubt, though on what grounds accorded, I know not-of a pension, on the Civil List, of £300 a year. The following is a copy of the King's Warrant for the grant:

(Signed)

"GEORGE R.

"Whereas we are graciously pleased to graut unto Catharine Gordon Byron, widow, an annuity of £300, to commence from 5th July, 1799, and to continue during pleasure our will and pleasure is, that, by virtue of our general letters of Privy Seal, bearing date 5th November, 1760, you do issue and pay out of our treasure, or revenue in the receipt of the Exchequer, applicable to the uses of our civil government, unto the said Catharine Gordon Byron, widow, or her assignees, the said annuity, to commence from 5th July, 1799, and to be paid quarterly, or otherwise, as the same shall become due, and to continue during our pleasure; and for so doing this shall be your warrant. Given at our Court of St James, 2d October, 1799, 39th year of our reign.

"By His Majesty's command.
(Signed)

"W. PITT. "S. DOUGLAS.

"Edwd. Roberts, Dep. Cler us. Pellium."

Finding but little benefit from the Nottingham practitioner, Mrs Byron, in the summer of the year 1799, thought it right to remove her boy to London, where, at the suggestion of Lord Carlisle, he was put under the care of Dr Baillie. It being an object, too, to place him at some quiet school, where the means adopted for the cure of his infirmity might be more easily attended to, the establishment of the late Dr Glennie, at Dulwich, was chosen for that purpose; and as it was thought advisable that he should have a separate apartment to sleep in, Dr Glennie had a bed put up for him in his own study. Mrs Byron, who had remained a short time behind him at Newstead, on her arrival in town took a house upon Sloane Terrace ; and under the direction of Dr Baillie, one of the

Messrs. Sheldrake* was employed to construct an instrument for the purpose of straightening the limb of the child. Moderation in all athletic exercises was, of course, prescribed; but Dr Glennie found it by no means easy to enforce compliance with this rule, as, though sufficiently quiet when along with him in his study, no sooner was the boy released for play, than he showed as much ambition to excel in all exercises as the most robust youth of the school;-"an ambition," adds Dr Glennie, in the communication with which he favoured me a short time before his death," which I have remarked to prevail in general in young persons labouring under similar defects of nature."+

He was

Having been instructed in the elements of Latin grammar according to the mode of teaching adopted at Aberdeen, the young student had now unluckily to retrace his steps, and was, as is too often the case, retarded in his studies and perplexed in his recollections, by the necessity of toiling through the rudiments again in one of the forms prescribed by the English schools. "I found him enter upon his tasks, says Dr Glennie, "with alacrity and success. playful, good-humoured, and beloved by his companions. His reading in history and poetry was far beyond the usual standard of his age, and in my study he found many books open to him, both to please his taste and to gratify his curiosity; among others, a set of our poets, from Chaucer to Churchill, which I am almost tempted to say he had more than once perused from beginning to end. He showed at this age an intimate acquaintance with the historical parts of the Holy Scriptures, upon which he seemed delighted to converse with me, especially after our religious exercises of a Sunday evening; when he would reason upon the facts contained in the Sacred Volume, with every appearance of belief in the divine truths which they unfold. That the impressions," adds the writer, "thus imbibed in his boyhood, had, notwithstanding the irregularities of his after life, sunk deep into his mind, will appear, I think, to every impartial reader of his works in general; and I never have been able to divest myself of the persuasion that, in the strange aberrations which so unfortunately marked his subsequent career, he must have found it difficult to violate the better principles early instilled into him."

It should have been mentioned, among the traits which I have recorded of his still earlier years, that, according to the character given of him by his first nurse's husband, he was, when a mere child, "particularly inquisitive and puzzling about religion."

In a letter, addressed lately by Mr Sheldrake to the Editor of a Medical Journal, it is stated that the person of the same name who attended Lord Byron at Dulwich owed the honour of being called in to a mistake, and effected nothing towards the remedy of the limb. The writer of the letter adds that he was himself consulted by Lord Byron four or five years afterwards, and though unable to undertake the cure of the defect, from the unwillingness of his noble patient to submit to restraint or confinement, was successful in constructing a sort of shoe for the foot, which, in some degree, alleviated the inconvenience under which he laboured,

+ Quoique," says Alfieri, speaking of his school-days, "je fusse le plus petit de tous les grands qui se trouvaient au second appartement où j'étais descendu, c'était précisement mon inferiorité de taille, d'âge, et de force, qui me donnait plus de courage, et m'engageait à me distinguer."

It was not long before Dr Glennie began to discover-what instructors of youth must too often experience that the parent was a much more difficult subject to deal with than the child. Though professing entire acquiescence in the representations of this gentleman, as to the propriety of leaving her son to pursue his studies without interruption, Mrs Byron had neither sense nor self-denial enough to act up to these professions; but, in spite of the remonstrances of Dr Glennie, and the injunctions of Lord Carlisle, continued to interfere with and thwart the progress of the boy's education in every way that a fond, wrong-headed, and self-willed mother could devise. In vain was it stated to her that, in all the elemental parts of learning which are requisite for a youth destined to a great public school, young Byron was much behind other youths of his age, and that, to retrieve this deficiency, the undivided application of his whole time would be necessary. Though appearing to be sensible of the truth of these suggestions, she not the less embarrassed and obstructed the teacher in his task. Not content with the interval between Saturday and Monday, which, contrary to Dr Glennie's wish, the boy generally passed at Sloane Terrace, she would frequently keep him at home a week beyond this time, and, still further to add to the distraction of such interruptions, collected around him a numerous circle of young acquaintances, without exercising, as may be supposed, much discrimination, in her choice. "How indeed could she ?" asks Dr Glennie;-" Mrs Byron was a total stranger to English society and English manners; with an exterior far from prepossessing, an understanding where nature had not been more bountiful, a mind almost wholly without cultivation, and the peculiarities of northern opinions, northern habits, and northern accent, I trust I do no great prejudice to the memory of my country woman, if I say Mrs Byron was not a Madame de Lambert, endowed with powers to retrieve the fortune, and form the character and manners of a young nobleman, her son."

Among the books that lay accessible to the boys in Doctor Glennie's study, was a pamphlet written by the brother of one of his most intimate friends, entitled "Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Juno on the coast of Arracan, in the year 1795." The writer had been the second officer of the ship, and the account which he had sent home to his friends of the sufferings of himself and his fellow-passengers, had appeared to them so touching and strange, that they determined to publish it. The pamphlet attracted but little, it seems, of public attention, but among the young students of Dulwich Grove it was a favourite study; and the impression which it left on the retentive mind of Byron may have had some share, perhaps, in suggesting that curious research, through all the various Accounts of Shipwrecks upon record, by which he prepared himself to depict with such power a scene of the same description in Don Juan. The following affecting incident, mentioned by the author of this pamphlet, has been adopted, it will be seen, with but little change either of phrase or circumstance, by the poet :

stances.

"Of those who were not immediately near me I knew little, unless by their cries. Some struggled hard, and died in great agony; but it was not always those whose strength was most impaired that died the easiest, though, in some cases, it might have been so. I particularly remember the following inMr Wade's servant, a stout and healthy boy, died early and almost without a groan; while another of the same age, but of a less promising appearance, held out much longer. The fate of these unfortunate boys differed also in another respect highly deserving of notice. Their fathers were both in the fore-top when the lads were taken ill. The father of Mr Wade's boy hearing of his son's illness, answered with indifference, that he could do nothing for him,' and left him to his fate. The other, when the accounts reached him, hurried down, and watching for a favourable moment, crawled on all fours along the weather gunwale to his son, who was in the mizen rigging. By that time, only three or four planks of the quarter-deck remained, just over the

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happy man led his son, making him fast to the rail
to prevent his being washed away. Whenever the
boy was seized with a fit of retching, the father
lifted him up and wiped the foam from his lips; and,
if a shower came, he made him open his mouth to
receive the drops, or gently squeezed them into it
from a rag. In this affecting situation both remained
four or five days, till the boy expired. The unfortu-
nate parent, as if unwilling to believe the fact, then
raised the body, gazed wistfully at it, and, when
he could no longer entertain any doubt, watched it
in silence till it was carried off by the sea; then,
wrapping himself in a piece of canvas, sunk down
and rose no more; though he must have lived two
limbs, when a wave broke over him.”*
days longer, as we judged from the quivering of his

The interposition of Lord Carlisle, to whose authority it was found necessary to appeal, had more than once given a check to these disturbing indul-weather-quarter gallery; and to this spot the ungences. Sanctioned by such support, Dr Glennie even ventured to oppose himself to the privilege, so often abused, of the usual visits on a Saturday; and the scenes which he had to encounter on each new case of refusal were such as would have wearied out the patience of any less zealous and conscientious schoolmaster. Mrs Byron, whose paroxysms of passion were not, like those of her son, "silent rages," would, on all these occasions, break out into such audible fits of temper as it was impossible to keep from reaching the ears of the scholars and the servants; and Dr Glennie had, one day, the pain of overhearing a schoolfellow of his noble pupil say to him, "Byron, your mother is a fool;" to which the other answered gloomily, "I know it." In consequence of all this violence and impracticability of temper, Lord Carlisle at length ceased to have any intercourse with the mother of his ward; and on a further application from the instructor, for the exertion of his influence, said, "I can have nothing more to do with Mrs Byron,-you must now manage her as you can."

* The following is Lord Byron's version of this touching narrative, and it will be felt, I think, by every reader, that this is one of the instances in which poetry must be content to yield the palm to prose. There is a pathos in the last sentences of the seaman's recital, which the artifices of metre and rhyme were sure to disturb, and which, indeed,

66

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.

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."

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. 66 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 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 one*.

"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 he 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 patient 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 com-
posed his 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.

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."

66

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

affectionate boy had also presented her with a fulllength miniature of himself, which was painted by Kay of Edinburgh, in the year 1795, and which represents him standing with a bow and arrows in his hand, and a profusion of hair falling over his shoulders. This curious little drawing has likewise passed into the possession of Dr Ewing.

The same thoughtful gratitude was evinced by Byron towards the sister of this woman, his first nurse, to whom he wrote some years after he left Scotland, in the most cordial terms, making inquiries of her welfare, and informing her, with much joy, that he had at last got his foot so far restored as to be able to put on a common boot,-" an event, for which he had long anxiously wished, and which he was sure would give her great pleasure."

In the summer of the year 1801 he accompanied his mother to Cheltenham, and the account which he himself gives of his sensations at that period* shows at what an early age those feelings that lead to poetry had unfolded themselves in his heart. A boy, gazing with emotion on the hills at sunset, because they remind him of the mountains among which he passed his childhood, is already, in heart and imagination, a poet. It was during their stay at Cheltenham that a fortune-teller, whom his mother consulted, pronounced a prediction concerning him which, for some time, left a strong impression on his mind. Mrs Byron had, it seems, in her first visit to this person (who, if I mistake not, was the celebrated fortune-teller, Mrs Williams) endeavoured to pass herself off as a maiden lady. The Sibyl, however, was not so easily deceived;-she pronounced her wise consulter to be not only a married woman, but the mother of a son who was lame, and to whom, among other events which she read in the stars, it was predestined that his life should be in danger from poison before he was of age, and that he should be twice married, the second time, to a foreign lady. About two years afterwards he himself mentioned these particulars to the person from whom I heard the story, and said that the thought of the first part of the prophecy very often occurred to him. The latter part, however, seems to have been the nearer guess of the two.

To a shy disposition, such as Byron's was in his youth and such as, to a certain degree, it continued all his life-the transition from a quiet establishment, like that of Dulwich Grove, to the bustle of a great public school, was sufficiently trying. Accordingly, we find from his own account, that, for the first year and a half, he "hated Harrow." The activity, however, and sociableness of his nature soon conquered this repugnance; and, from being, as he himself says, a most unpopular boy," he rose at length to be a leader in all the sports, schemes, and mischief of the school.

66

For a general notion of his disposition and capacities at this period, we could not have recourse to a more trustworthy or valuable authority than that of the Rev. Dr Drury, who was at this time head master of the school, and to whom Lord Byron has left on record a tribute of affection and respect, which, like the reverential regard of Dryden for

* See page 6.

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Dr Busby, will long associate together honourably the names of the poet and the master. From this venerable scholar I have received the following brief, but important, statement of the impressions which his early intercourse with the young noble left upon him:

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"Mr Hanson, Lord Byron's solicitor, consigned him to my care at the age of thirteen and a half, with remarks, that his education had been neglected; that he was ill prepared for a public school, but that he thought there was a cleverness about him. After his departure I took my young disciple into my study, and endeavoured to bring him forward by inquiries as to his former amusements, employments, and associates, but with little or no effect;-and I soon found that a wild mountain colt had been submitted to my management. But there was mind in his eye. In the first place, it was necessary to attach him to an elder boy, in order to familiarize him with the objects before him, and with some parts of the system in which he was to move. But the information he received from his conductor gave him no pleasure, when he heard of the advances of some in the school, much younger than himself, and conceived by his own deficiency that he should be degraded and humbled, by being placed below them. This I discovered, and having committed him to the care of one of the masters, as his tutor, I assured him he should not be placed till, by diligence, he might rank with those of his own age. He was pleased with this assurance, and felt himself on easier terms with his associates ;— for a degree of shyness hung about him for some time. His manner and temper soon convinced me, that he might be led by a silken string to a point, rather than by a cable;-on that principle I acted. After some continuance at Harrow, and when the powers of his mind had begun to expand, the late Lord Carlisle, his relation, desired to see me in town;-I waited on his lordship. His object was to inform me of Lord Byron's expectations of property when he came of age, which he represented as contracted, and to inquire respecting his abilities. On the former circumstance I made no remark; as to the latter, I replied,' He has talents, my lord, which will add lustre to his rank.' Indeed!!!' said his lordship, with a degree of surprise, that, according to my feeling, did not express in it all the satisfaction I expected.

"The circumstance to which you allude, .as to his declamatory powers, was as follows. The upper part of the school composed declamations, which, after a revisal by the tutors, were submitted to the master to him the authors repeated them, that they might be improved in manner and action, before their public delivery. I certainly was much pleased with Lord Byron's attitude, gesture, and delivery, as well as with his composition. All who spoke on that day adhered, as usual, to the letter of their composition, as, in the earlier part of his delivery, did Lord Byron. But to my surprise he suddenly diverged from the written composition, with a boldness and rapidity sufficient to alarm me, lest he should fail in memory as to the conclusion. There was no failure;-he came round to the close of his composition without discovering any impediment and irregularity on the whole. I questioned him, why he had

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 illustrious 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 opinions 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 fascinated 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?'""

6

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,

“Till I was eighteen years old (odd as it may seem) I had never read a Review. But while at Harrow, my general information was so great on modern 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 fluency, 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 linguâ, 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 t (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 cloîtres."-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

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