FAMILY OF LORD BYRON.

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faction (previously to her death, which happened in 1811) to see her son inherit the honours of his family, take his seat in the House of Peers, and to witness the opening dawn of that brilliant career, which excited the admiration of the present gene

ration, and will endear his name to posterity.

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BIRTH OF GEORGE GORDON.

CHAPTER II.

George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron ;- his first Rudiments of Education at a Public School at Aberdeen, in Scotland; succeeds to the Title on the Death of his Great-Uncle, without issue ;-removed to Harrow School, near London ;-from thence goes to the University of Cambridge. More remarkable for his Eccentricities, than for any early display of Genius.

GEORGE GORDON, the sixth and late Lord Byron, was born in London, on the 22d January, in the year 1788,* and was bred up on the estate of his mother, within thirty miles of the town of Aberdeen; but when the desperate state of his father's

* Some uncertainty prevails with respect to the place of his birth. It has been asserted that he was born in Holles-street, Cavendish-square, his father having at that time held a commission in the Guards; but this assertion we have neither been able to substantiate nor refute. It has been said that he was born in Aberdeenshire, on his maternal estate; but this is left doubtful in his writings. In his poem Lachin-y-Gair,' he only says he spent some of the early part of his life near that spot: and in his address to Mr. Jeffrey, the Editor of the Edinburgh Review,

he says:

"But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred

A whole one:"

This question is now decided by Mrs. Leigh, Lord Byron's sister and senior. The inscription on the coffin-plate mentions that his Lordship was born in LONDON!! (See account of the funeral procession at the end of this work.)

EARLY EDUCATION.

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affairs had rendered it necessary that he should leave the country, the Hon. Mrs. Byron went to Aberdeen with her son; and as her finances were in a very low state, her style of living was the most parsimonious. Her fondness for her only son was the most exemplary and praiseworthy; and he could not go out on an evening without her enjoining him to take the greatest care of himself, as she had no one she lived for but himself. With truly maternal anxiety she watched his infancy, and instructed him in the rudiments of the English language. She was a lady of very staid and sober habits; her face was comely, and her air that of a lady; but her stature was diminutive, and she was too much en bon point for being accounted handsome.

When his years and his preparation had fitted him for it, he was sent to the Grammar School, where he was called in the list by the name of George Byron Gordon, and if any one presumed, or even attempted to transpose the two last words, he felt it as an insult of the first magnitude; con. sidering that those paternal friends, who had done nothing for him, ought not to usurp the place of the name of that mother who had done every thing for him.

Although, whilst at the Grammar School, he did not show any symptoms of talent superior to that of his fellow-students, yet he was amongst the boldest and bravest of them all. Though

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YOUTHFUL SENSIBILITY.

weak in body, he was invincible in mind; and in all sports and amusements which were of an adventurous nature, he took the lead among his schoolfellows in riding upon horses, fishing, sailing, swimming, and in all those occupations which had something of spirit in them congenial to his mind, he conducted himself with a degree of intrepidity and skill far surpassing what might have been expected from one of his tender years. Although by no means the strongest, either in frame or in constitution, he was exceedingly brave, and in the juvenile wars of the school he generally obtained the victory. Upon one occasion, a boy, who had been attacked without just cause, took refuge in his mother's house, and he interposed his authority to say that nobody should be ill-used while under his roof and protection. Upon this the aggressor dared him to fight; and though the boy was much the stronger of the two, the spirit of Byron was so determined, that they fought until they were both out of breath, and neither could claim the victory.

The most remarkable circumstance of young Byron at this time was extreme sensibility of mind. As an instance of this it may be mentioned, that when his name was first called out in the list as Georgius Dominus de Byron, the boys set up a shout, which the master could not suppress, and this had such an effect upon him, that it was with great difficulty he could be prevailed on to con

tinue at the school. His elevation seemed to give him no great pleasure, and the distance which many of his old companions felt it proper to keep from him, upon its being made generally known, gave him so much pain, that he occasionally burst into tears.

An answer which he made to a fellow-scholar in the Grammar School at Aberdeen, who questioned him as to the cause of the honorary addition of Dominus to his name, served at that time, when he was only ten years of age, to point out that he would be a man who would think, speak, and act for himself; who, whatever might be his sayings or his doings, his vices or his virtues, would not condescend to take them at secondhand. This happened on the very day after he was menaced with a flogging round the school, and when the question was put to him, he replied, "It is not my doing: Fortune was to whip me yesterday for what another did; and she has this dạy made me a Lord for what another has ceased to do. I need not thank her in either case, for I have asked nothing at her hands."

This desire to stand alone in his opinions, as well as his actions, appears to have grown with the growth, and strengthened with the strength of the noble youth; and though perhaps not the sole cause, was at least one cause, both of the celebrity which he attained, and of the calumny