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 his arm, "I would take half!" There is a mixture of simplicity and magnanimity in this little trait which is truly heroic; and, however we may smile at the friendships of boys, it is but rarely that the friendship of manhood is capable of any thing half so generous. Among his school favourites a great number, it may be observed, were nobles or of noble 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. 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, stiil 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." "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 to say, 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 It is true that Lord Byron's high notions of rank the perusal of your 'first flights!' There is another were, in his boyish days, so little disguised or soft-circumstance you do not know;-the first lines I ened 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 ever attempted at Harrow were addressed to you. You were to have seen them; but Sinclair had the copy in his possession when we went home;-and on our return, we were strangers. They were destroyed, and certainly no great loss; but you will perceive from this circumstance my opinions at an age when we cannot be hypocrites. "I have dwelt longer on this theme than I intended, and I shall now conclude with what I ought to have call you friend. I shall be obliged for an answer a soon as it is convenient; till then "I remain yours, "I cannot say your friend." 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 by my then and, I hope, ever beloved friend, Lord** when we were both schoolboys, and sent to my stud in consequence of some childish misunderstanding, and what we were." Of the tenaciousness with which, as we see in this Endorsed on this letter, in the handwriting of Lor Byron, is the following: "This and another letter were written, at Harrow letter, he clung to all the impressions of his youth, the only one which ever arose between us. It was o 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. &e. "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 you 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. "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 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 short duration, and I retain this note solely for th 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 an not much mistaken, you are a little piqued with me In one part you say, "There is little or no doubt few years, or months, will render us as politely in different 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, Together join'd in cricket's manly toil, 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 "S 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 de parture 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 Sunday John Russell set off for Spain. Was not that suffi 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 bear 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 burt 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 you can think I am more sorry for John's absence than I me than of that one who was absent. It is quite impossibi 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; 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 age, he wrote these remarkable lines: 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 Riddel, 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, 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 whichyoung 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."+ at the Hut, though asserted by one of the old servants, *I find this circumstance, of his having occasionally slept 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, 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 memorandum books: "When I was fifteen years of age, it happened 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 impossible, 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 ear, "I hope you like your friend." His time at Annesley was mostly passed in riding with Miss Chaworth and her cousin,-sitting in idle reveric, 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, As they seem, through the dimness, about to come down 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 Neither is it, indeed, probable, had even her at fections been disengaged, that Lord Byron would at this time, have been selected as the object c them. A seniority of two years gives to a girl, the eve of womanhood," an advance into life, wit which the boy keeps no proportionate pace. Mis Chaworth looked upon Byron as a mere schoolboy He was in his manners, too, at that period, roug and odd, and (as I have heard from more than one. quarter) by no means popular among girls of his ow age. If, at any moment, however, he had flattere himself with the hope of being loved by her, a cir cumstance mentioned in his " Memoranda," as one of the most painful of those humiliations to whic the defect in his foot had exposed him, must have le the truth in, with dreadful certainty, upon his heart He either was told of, or overheard, Miss Chawort! saying to her maid, "Do you think I could care any thing for that lame boy?" This speech, as he him self 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 himsel at Newstead. The picture which he has drawn of this youthfu 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 old hall at Annesley, under, the name of "the antique oratory," will long call up to fancy 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 rolate) 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, which, in his poem of "the Dream," he describes so one, but, by giving up the leadership to him, you happily as "crowned with a peculiar diadem." No may at once secure him." This Wildman accordone, he declared, could have told how much he felt-ingly did, and Byron took the command of the party. for his countenance was calm and his feelings restrained. "The next time I see you," said he, in parting with her, "I suppose you will be Mrs Chaworth," and her answer was, "I hope so." It was before this interview that he wrote, with a pencil, in a volume of Madame de Maintenon's letters belonging to her, the following verses, which have never, I believe, before been published Oh Memory, torture me no more, Regret and hope are both in vain; 6 In the following year, 1805, Miss Chaworth was married to his successful rival, Mr John Musters; and a person who was present when the first intelligence of the event was communicated to him, thus describes the manner in which he received it.-" I was present when he first heard of the marriage. His mother said, Byron, I have some news for you.'-' Well, what is it? Take out your handkerchief first, for you will want it.'-' Nonsense!'Take out your handkerchief, I say. He did so, to humour her. Miss Chaworth is married.' An expression, very peculiar, impossible to describe, passed over his pale face, and he hurried his handkerchief into his pocket, saying, with an affected air of coldness and nonchalance, Is that all? Why, I expected you would have been plunged in grief!'He made no reply, and soon began to talk about something else." The violence with which he opposed the election of Doctor Butler on this occasion (chiefly from the warm affection which he had felt towards the last master) continued to embitter his relations with that gentleman during the remainder of his stay at Harrow. Unluckily their opportunities of collision were the more frequent from Byron being a resident in Dr Butler's house. One day the young rebel, in a fit of defiance, tore down all the gratings from the window in the hall; and when called upon by his host to say why he had committed this violence, answered, with stern coolness, "because they darkened the hall." On another occasion he explicitly, and so far manfully, avowed to this gentleman's face the pique he entertained against him. It has long been customary, at the end of a term, for the master to invite the upper boys to dine with him; and these invitations are generally considered as, like royal ones, a sort of command. Lord Byron, however, when asked, sent he, on the first opportunity that occurred, inquired of back a refusal, which rather surprising Doctor Butler, him, in the presence of the other boys, his motive for this step:-"Have you any other engagement?"Byron."-" I have."-" What is it?"-" Why, Dr "No, sir."-" But you must have some reason, Lord Butler," replied the young peer, with proud composure, "if you should happen to come into my neighshould not ask you to dine with me, and therefore bourhood when I was staying at Newstead, I certainly feel that I ought not to dine with you." The general character which he bore among the would never learn any thing; and, as far as regarded masters at Harrow was that of an idle boy, who his tasks in school, this reputation was, by his own avowal, not ill founded. It is impossible, indeed, to look through the books which he had then in use, and which are scribbled over with clumsily interlined extent of his classical attainments. The most orditranslations, without being struck with the narrow His pursuits at Harrow continued to be of the same truant description during the whole of his stay there; "always," as he says himself," cricketing, rebelling, rowing, and in all manner of mischiefs."nary Greek words have their English signification The" rebelling," of which he here speaks (though it scrawled under them, showing too plainly that he never, I believe, proceeded to any act of violence), to trust himself without this aid. was not sufficiently familiarized with their meaning took place on the retirement of Dr Drury from his Thus, in his situation as head-master, when three candidates for Xenophon we find veos, young-oopaoir, bodiesthe vacant chair presented themselves, Mark Drury, vps Tois ayabois, good men, &c. &c.—and Evans, and Butler. On the first movement to which even in the volumes of Greek Plays, which he prethis contest gave rise in the school, young Wildman sented to the library on his] departure, we observe, was at the head of the party for Mark Drury, while among other instances, the common word XpuroS Byron at first held himself aloof from any. Anxious, provided with its English representative in the however, to have him as an ally, one of the Drury faction said to Wildman-" Byron, I know, will not join, because he does n't choose to act second to any name. Now no more, the hours beguiling, Makes ye seem a Heaven to me. The lady's husband, for some time, took her family † Gibbon, in speaking of public schools, says- the mimic scene of a rebellion has displayed, in their true colours, the ministers and patriots of the rising generation. Such prognostics, however, are not always to be relied upon;the mild, peaceful Addison was, when at school, the successful leader of a barring-out. margin. But, notwithstanding his backwardness in the cious a portion of life is wasted," in all that general mere verbal scholarship, on which so large and preand miscellaneous knowledge, which is alone useful in the world, he was making rapid and even wonder "It is deplorable to consider the loss which children make of their time at most schools, employing, or rather casting away, six or seven years in the learning of words only, and that very imperfectly."-Cowley, Essays, "Would not a Chinese, who took notice of our way of breeding, be apt to imagine that all our young gentlemen were designed to be teachers and professors of the dead languages of foreign countries, and not to be men of business in their own."-Locke on Education. |