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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, Cs. 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, Eschylus, 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 disposi"Ida's social tions, which greeted him among 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 claim (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 succeeding 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 66 'I would take half!"

his arm,

There is a mixture of simplicity and magnanimity in this little trait which 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 family Lords 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 punishment. 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 debut you stroyed, and certainly no great loss; perceive from this circumstance my opinions at an age when we cannot be hypocrites.

6

will

"I have dwelt longer on this theme than I intended, and I shall now conclude with what I ought to have

begun. We were once friends,-nay, we have always been so, for our separation was the effect of chance, not of dissension. I do not know how far our destinations in life may throw us together, but if opportunity and inclination allow you to waste a thought on such a hare-brained being as myself, you will find me at least sincere, and not so bigoted to my faults as to involve others in the consequences. Will you sometimes write to me? I do not ask it often, and, if we meet, let us be what we should be

and what we were.' ""

Of the tenaciousness with which, as we see in this letter, he clung to all the impressions of his youth, there can be no stronger proof than the very interesting fact, that, while so little of his own boyish correspondence has been preserved, there were found among his papers almost all the notes and letters which his principal school favourites, even the youngest, had ever addressed to him; and, in some cases, where the youthful writers had omitted to date their scrawls, his faithful memory had, at an interval of years after, supplied the deficiency. Among these memorials, so fondly treasured by him, there is one which it would be unjust not to cite, as well on account of the manly spirit that dawns through its own childish language, as for the sake of the tender and amiable feeling which, it will be seen, the re-perusal of it, in other days, awakened in Byron :

"TO THE LORD BYRON, &c. &c.

"Harrow on the Hill, July 28th, 1805. "Since you have been so unusually unkind to me, in calling me names whenever you meet me, of late, I must beg an explanation, wishing to know whether you choose to be as good friends with me as ever. I must own that, for this last month, you have entirely cut me.-for, I suppose, your new cronies. But think not that I will (because you choose to take into your head some whim or other) be always going up to you, nor do, as I observe certain other fellows doing, to regain your friendship; nor think that I am your friend either through interest, or because you are bigger and older than I am. No,-it never was so, nor ever shall be so. I was only your friend, and am so still,-unless you go on in this way, calling me names whenever you see me. I am sure you may easily perceive I do not like it; therefore, why should you do it, unless you wish that I should no longer be your friend? And why should I be so, if treat me unkindly? I have no interest in being so. Though you do not let the boys bully me, yet if you treat me unkindly, that is to me a great deal worse.

you

call you friend. I shall be obliged for an answer as soon as it is convenient; till then

"I remain yours,

"I cannot say your friend."

Byron, is the following:
Endorsed on this letter, in the handwriting of Lord

by my then and, I hope, ever beloved friend, Lord*
"This and another letter were written, at Harrow,

when we were both schoolboys, and sent to my study the only one which ever arose between us. in consequence of some childish misunderstanding,— It was of short duration, and I retain this note solely for the purpose of submitting it to his perusal, that we may smile over the recollection of the insignificance of our first and last quarrel. "BYRON."

In a letter, dated two years afterwards, from the same boy *, there occurs the following characteristic trait: I think by your last letter that you are very much piqued with most of your friends; and, if I am not much mistaken, you are a little piqued with me. In one part you say, There is little or no doubt a few years, or months, will render us as politely indifferent to each other, as if we had never passed a portion of our time together.' Indeed, Byron, you wrong me, and I have no doubt-at least, I hopeyou wrong yourself."

As that propensity to self-delineation which so strongly pervades his maturer works is, to the full, as predominant in his early productions, there needs no better record of his mode of life, as a schoolboy, than what these fondly circumstantial effusions supply. Thus the sports he delighted and excelled in are enumerated:

Yet when confinement's lingering hour was done,
Our sports, our studies, and our souls were one :
Together we impell'd the flying ball,

Together join'd in cricket's manly toil,
Or shared the produce of the river's spoil;
Or, plunging from the green, declining shore,
Our pliant limbs the buoyant waters bore;
In every element, unchanged, the same,
All, all that brothers should be, but the name.

There are, in other letters of the same writer, some curious proofs of the passionate and jealous sensibility of Byron. From one of them, for instance, we collect that he had taken offence at his young friend's addressing him "my dear Byron," instead of my "dearest ;" and, from another, that his jealousy had been awakened by some expressions of regret which his correspondent had expressed at the departure of Lord John Russell for Spain:

"You tell me," says the young letter-writer, "that you never knew me in such an agitation as I was when I wrote my last letter; and do you not think I had reason to be so? I received a letter from you on Saturday, telling me you were going abroad for six years in March, and on

"I am no hypocrite, Byron, nor will I, for your pleasure, ever suffer you to call me names, if you wish me to be your friend. If not, I cannot help it. I am sure no one can say that I will cringe to regain Sunday John Russell set off for Spain. Was not that suffi

a friendship that you have rejected. Why should I do so? Am I not your equal? Therefore, what interest can I have in doing so? When we meet again in the world (that is, if you choose it), you cannot advance or promote me, nor I you. Therefore I beg and entreat of you, if you value my friendship, -which, by your conduct, I am sure I cannot think you do,-not to call me the names you do, nor abuse me. Till that time, it will be out of my power to

cient to make me rather melancholy? But how can you possibly imagine that I was more agitated on John Russell's account, who is gone for a few months, and from whom I shall hear constantly, than at your going for six years to travel over most part of the world, when I shall hardly ever hear from you, and perhaps may never see you again?

"It has very much hurt me your telling me that you might be excused if you felt rather jealous at my expressing

more sorrow for the departure of the friend who was with me than of that one who was absent. It is quite impossible you can think I am more sorry for John's absence than I shall be for yours;-I shall therefore finish the subject."

The danger which he incurred in a fight with some of the neighbouring farmers-an event well remembered by some of his school-fellows-is thus commemorated :

Still I remember, in the factious strife,

The rustic's musket aim'd against my life;
High poised in air the massy weapon hung,
A cry of horror burst from every tongue :
Whilst I, in combat with another foe,
Fought on, unconscious of the impending blow,
Your arm, brave boy, arrested his career-
Forward you sprung, insensible to fear;
Disarm'd and baffled by your conquering hand,
The grovelling savage roll'd upon the sand.

Some feud, it appears, had arisen on the subject of the cricket-ground, between these "clods" (as in school-language they are called) and the boys, and one or two skirmishes had previously taken place. But the engagement here recorded was accidentally brought on by the breaking up of school and the dismissal of the volunteers from drill, both happening, on that occasion, at the same hour. This circumstance accounts for the use of the musket, the butend of which was aimed at Byron's head, and would have felled him to the ground but for the interposition of his friend Tatersall, a lively, high-spirited boy, whom he addresses here under the name of Davus. Notwithstanding these general habits of play and idleness, which might seem to indicate a certain absence of reflection and feeling, there were moments when the youthful poet would retire thoughtfully within himself, and give way to moods of musing uncongenial with the usual cheerfulness of his age. They show a tomb in the churchyard at Harrow, commanding a view over Windsor, which was so well known to be his favourite resting-place, that the boys called it" Byron's tomb;"* and here, they say, he used to sit for hours, wrapt up in thought,-brooding lonelily over the first stirrings of passion and genius in his soul, and occasionally perhaps indulging in those bright forethoughts of fame, under the influence of which, when little more than fifteen years of he wrote these remarkable lines:

age,

My epitaph shall be my name alone; If that with honour fail to crown my clay, Oh may no other fame my deeds repay; That, only that, shall single out the spot, By that remember'd, or with that forgot. In the autumn of 1802 he passed a short time with his mother at Bath, and entered, rather prematurely, into some of the gaieties of the place. At a masquerade given by Lady Řiddel, he appeared in the character of a Turkish boy,-a sort of anticipation, both in beauty and costume, of his own young Selim in "the Bride." On his entering into the house, some person in the crowd attempted to snatch the diamond crescent from his turban, but was prevented by the prompt interposition of one of the party. The lady who mentioned to me this circumstance, and who was well acquainted with Mrs Byron at that period, adds the following remark in the communication with which she has favoured me:-" At Bath I saw a good deal of Lord Byron, his mother frequently sent for me to

* To this tomb he thus refers in the "Childish Recollections," as printed in his first (unpublished) volume:

Oft when, oppress'd with sad, foreboding gloom,
I sat reclined upon our favourite tomb.

take tea with her. He was always very pleasant and droll, and, when conversing about absent friends, showed a slight turn for satire, which after-years, as is well known, gave a finer edge to.'

"

We come now to an event in his life which, according to his own deliberate persuasion, exercised a lasting and paramount influence over the whole of his subsequent character and career.

It was in the year 1803 that his heart, already twice, as we have seen, possessed with the childish notion that it loved, conceived an attachment which— young as he was, even then, for such a feeling-sunk so deep into his mind as to give a colour to all his future life. That unsuccessful loves are generally the most lasting is a truth, however sad, which unluckily did not require this instance to confirm it. To the same cause, I fear, must be traced the perfect innocence and romance, which distinguish this very early attachment to Miss Chaworth from the many others that succeeded, without effacing, it in his heart;-making it the only one whose details can be entered into with safety, or whose results, however darkening their influence on himself, can be dwelt upon with a pleasurable interest by others.

On leaving Bath, Mrs Byron took up her abode, in lodgings, at Nottingham,-Newstead Abbey being at that time let to Lord Grey de Ruthen,-and during the Harrow vacations of this year she was joined there by her son. So attached was he to Newstead that even to be in its neighbourhood was a delight to him; and before he became acquainted with Lord Grey, he used sometimes to sleep, for a night, at the small house near the gate, which is still known by the name of "the Hut."* An intimacy, however, soon sprung up between him and his noble tenant, and an apartment in the abbey was from thenceforth always at his service. To the family of Miss Chaworth, who resided at Annesley, in the immediate neighbourhood of Newstead, he had been made known, some time before, in London, and now renewed his acquaintance with them. The young heiress herself combined, with the many worldly advantages that encircled her, much personal beauty, and a disposition the most amiable and attaching. Though already fully alive to her charms, it was at the period of which we are speaking that the young poet, who was then in his sixteenth year, while the object of his adoration was about two years older, seems to have drunk deepest of that fascination whose effects were to be so lasting ;-six short summer weeks which he now passed in her company being sufficient to lay the foundation of a feeling for all life.

He used, at first, though offered a bed at Annesley, to return every night to Newstead, to sleep; alleging as a reason that he was afraid of the family pictures of the Chaworths,-that he fancied "they had taken a grudge to him on account of the duel, and would come down from their frames at night to haunt him."+

* I find this circumstance, of his having occasionally slept at the Hut, though asserted by one of the old servants, much doubted by others.

It may possibly have been the recollection of these pictures that suggested to him the following lines in the Siege of Corinth :

Like the figures on arras that gloomily glare,
Stirr'd by the breath of the wintry air,

At length, one evening, he said gravely to Miss Chaworth and her cousin, " In going home last night I saw a bogle;"-which Scotch term being wholly unintelligible to the young ladies, he explained that he had seen a ghost, and would not therefore return to Newstead that evening. From this time, he always slept at Annesley during the remainder of his visit, which was interrupted only by a short excursion to Matlock and Castleton, in which he had the happiness of accompanying Miss Chaworth and her party, and of which the following interesting notice appears in one of his memorandumbooks:

"When I was fifteen years of it happened age, that in a cavern in Derbyshire, I had to cross in a boat (in which two people only could lie down), a stream which flows under a rock, with the rock so close upon the water as to admit the boat only to be pushed on by a ferryman (a sort of Charon) who wades at the stern, stooping all the time. The companion of my transit was M. A. C., with whom I had been long in love and never told it, though she had discovered it without. I recollect my sensations, but cannot describe them, and it is as well. We were a party, a Mr W., two Miss W.'s, Mr and Mrs Cl-ke, Miss R., and my M. A. C. Alas! why do I say MY? Our union would have healed feuds in which blood had been shed by our fathers, it would have joined lands broad and rich, it would have joined at least one heart, and two persons not ill matched in years (she is two years my elder), and-and-and-what |

has been the result?"

In the dances of the evening at Matlock, Miss Chaworth, of course, joined, while her lover sate looking on, solitary and mortified. It is not impos

sible, indeed, that the dislike which he always expressed for this amusement may have originated in some bitter pang, felt in his youth, on seeing "the lady of his love" led out by others to the gay dance from which he was himself excluded. On the present occasion, the young heiress of Annesley having had for her partner (as often happens at Matlock) some person with whom she was wholly unacquainted, on her resuming her seat, Byron said to her, pettishly, "I hope you like your friend." The words were scarce out of his lips when he was accosted by an ungainly-looking Scotch lady, who rather boisterously claimed him as "cousin," and was putting his pride to the torture with her vulgarity, when he heard the voice of his fair companion retorting archly in his I hope you like your friend."

ear,

66

His time at Annesley was mostly passed in riding with Miss Chaworth and her cousin,-sitting in idle reverie, as was his custom, pulling at his handkerchief, or in firing at a door which opens upon the terrace, and which still, I believe, bears the marks of his shots. But his chief delight was in sitting to hear Miss Chaworth play; and the pretty Welsh air, "Mary Anne," was (partly, of course, on account of the name) his especial favourite. During all this time he had the pain of knowing that the

So seen by the dying lamp's fitful light,
Lifeless, but life-like and awful to sight;

As they seem, through the dimness, about to come down
From the shadowy wall where their images frown.

heart of her he loved was occupied by another :~ that, as he himself expresses it,

Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother-but no more.

66

Neither is it, indeed, probable, had even her affections been disengaged, that Lord Byron would, at this time, have been selected as the object of them. A seniority of two years gives to a girl, on the eve of womanhood," an advance into life, with which the boy keeps no proportionate pace. Miss Chaworth looked upon Byron as a mere schoolboy. He was in his manners, too, at that period, rough and odd, and (as I have heard from more than one quarter) by no means popular among girls of his own age. If, at any moment, however, he had flattered himself with the hope of being loved by her, a circumstance mentioned in his "Memoranda," as one of the most painful of those humiliations to which the defect in his foot had exposed him, must have let the truth in, with dreadful certainty, upon his heart. He either was told of, or overheard, Miss Chaworth saying to her maid, " Do you think I could care any thing for that lame boy?" This speech, as he himself described it, was like a shot through his heart. Though late at night when he heard it, he instantly darted out of the house, and scarcely knowing whither he ran, never stopped till he found himself at Newstead.

The picture which he has drawn of this youthful love, in one of the most interesting of his poems, "The Dream," shows how genius and feeling can elevate the realities of this life, and give to the commonest events and objects an undying lustre. The antique oratory," will long call up to fancy the old hall at Annesley, under the name of "the "maiden and the youth" who once stood in it; while the image of the "lover's steed," though suggested by the unromantic race-ground of Nottingham, will not the less conduce to the general charm of the scene, and share a portion of that light which only Genius could shed over it.

He appears already, at this boyish age, to have been so far a proficient in gallantry as to know the use that may be made of the trophies of former triumphs in achieving new ones; for he used to boast, with much pride, to Miss Chaworth, of a locket which some fair favourite had given him, and which probably may have been a present from that pretty cousin, of whom he speaks with such warmth in one of the notices already quoted. He was also, it appears, not a little aware of his own beauty, which, notwithstanding the tendency to corpulence derived from his mother, gave promise, at this time, of that peculiar expression into which his features refined and kindled afterwards.

With the summer holidays ended this dream of his youth. He saw Miss Chaworth once more in the succeeding year, and took his last farewell of her (as he himself used to relate) on that hill near Annesley*

* Among the unpublished verses of his in my possession, I find the following fragment written not long after this period:

Hills of Annesley, bleak and barren,

Where my thoughtless childhood stray'd,
How the northern tempests, warring,
Howl above thy tufted shade!

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