38

YOUTHFUL INTREPIDITY.

and misrepresentation with which he was subsequently assailed.

At that time, though he was occasionally a moody and thoughtful boy, yet he was the foremost and gayest in all the more manly sports; he was also extremely kind-hearted, and would not on any account be guilty of any act of cruelty or injustice. All who knew him at that period speak of him with the greatest respect.

He was exceedingly attached to the customs of the remote place in which he was bred, and deeply impressed by the legends and sayings which were common among the people. One of his schoolfellows had a little Shetland pony; and, one day, the two together had got the pony to take an alternate ride, or to " ride and tie," as it was vulgarly called, along the banks of the Don. When they were come to the old bridge, Byron stopped his companion, and insisted that he should dismount, while he himself rode along the bridge; "for," said he, " you remember the prophecy :

"Brig o' Balgownie, though wight be thy wa',
Wi' a widow's ae son, and a mare's ae foal,

Down thou'lt fa'.'

"Now, who knows but the pony may be a mare's ae foal, and we are both widows' ae sons; but you have a sister, and I have nobody to lament for me but my mother." The other boy con

ROMANTIC IDEAS.

39

sented; but as soon as young Byron had escaped the terrors of the bridge, the other insisted upon following his example; he, too, rode safely across, and they concluded that the pony was not the only production of its dam.

Thus passed the first ten years of his life in Aberdeenshire, where (being, as already mentioned, of a very sickly constitution and delicate frame of body) he was permitted to range the hills and dales* of that romantic country, in the hope that the air and exercise might improve his health. It has been supposed that the liberty which he thus enjoyed rendered him ever after

*This impression was never effaced during life; for, in the poem of "The Island," written and published in 1823, the year before that in which he died, is the following note: "When very young, about eight years of age, after an attack of the scarlet fever, at Aberdeen, I was removed, by medical advice, into the Highlands. Here I passed occasionally some summers, and from this period I date my love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect, a few years afterwards, in England, of the only thing I had long seen, even in miniature, of a mountain in the Malvern Hills. After I returned to Cheltenham, I used to watch them every afternoon at sunset, with a sensation which I cannot describe; this was boyish enough, but I was then only thirteen years of age, and it was in the holidays."

This love of the romantic scenery of his youthful days is strongly depicted in the poem entitled Lachin-y-Gair,' and in stanzas beginning:

"I would I were a careless child

Still dwelling in my Highland cave;

Or roaming through the dusky wild,

Or bounding o'er the dark blue wave," &c.

40

IMPATIENCE OF RESTRAINT.

wards impatient of restraint: certain it is that the wildness of the scenery amidst which he passed his infant years imbued his mind with a romantic cast, and tinctured his poetical effusions with that boldness of wandering which disdains all shackles. In his first production, Hours of Idleness,' in a poem entitled Lachin-y-Gair,' he thus describes his youthful wanderings:

"Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wander'd;
My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid;
On chieftains long perish'd my memory ponder'd,
As daily I strode through the pine-cover'd glade;
I sought not my home till the day's dying glory
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star;
For Fancy was cheer'd by traditional story,

Disclos'd by the natives of dark Loch na Garr."

It has been currently reported (but we know not with what foundation) that our bard, in his poem of Don Juan,' delineates the characters of his parents as Don José and Donna Inez, in the following, among other stanzas:

"He was a mortal of the careless kind,

With no great love for learning or the learn'd;

Who chose to go where'er he had a mind,
And never dream'd his lady was concern'd;

The world, as usual, wickedly inclin'd,

To see a kingdom or a house o'erturn'd,
Whisper'd he had a mistress, some said two ;
But, for domestic quarrels one will do."

"Now Donna Inez had, with all her merit,
A great opinion of her own good qualities;

BECOMES SIXTH LORD BYRON.

Neglect, indeed, requires a saint to bear it,

And such, indeed, she was in her moralities:

And then she had a devil of a spirit,

And sometimes mix'd up fancies with realities ;
And let few opportunities escape

Of getting her liege lord into a scrape.

41

He could know nothing, but by hearsay, of his father, who left England in his infancy, and died when he was only three years old; of his mother it does not appear that he had occasion to think or speak with any thing but reverence.

On the death of the fifth Lord William, (which, as we have already mentioned, took place at Newstead Abbey, on the 17th May 1798), he succeeded to the title and estates, when he was only ten years of age, up to which time he continued to reside in Aberdeenshire. Falling under the guardianship of the Earl of Carlisle (a relation by marriage), it was now thought proper to remove him to an English seminary, where he might receive an education suited to his rank; and he was accordingly placed at Harrow school, in Middlesex. It does not appear that whilst there he gave any augury of a rising genius; that he was remarkable for either his quickness of apprehension or application to study. He himself, in a note to canto iv. of Childe Harold, informs the world that he deems the study of the classics a drudgery when young, and apt to pall the appetite when old: an idea, so very erroneous and absurd, that it is impossible to believe he could be in earnest

when he made it; it resembles the affectation of a beautiful woman, who denies her own perfections, in order to have them praised by her admirers; it is a position of itself so very destitute of foundation, that it would be equally absurd to waste a moment's time in its refutation. Lord Byron either forgets, or else he refutes himself, in his Satire entitled " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," where he

says:

"Blest is the man who dares approach the bower,

Where dwelt the Muses at their natal hour;

Whose steps have press'd, whose eye has mark'd afar
The clime that nurs'd the sons of song and war;
The scenes which Glory still must hover o'er,
Her place of birth, her own Achaian shore!
But doubly blest is he, whose heart expands
With hallow'd feelings for those classic lands;
Who rends the veil of ages long gone by,

And views their remnants with a poet's eye!"

But though his Lordship did not afford any very remarkable symptoms of superior genius, it appears that he gave many striking proofs of an undaunted and invincible spirit, notwithstanding his labouring under the disadvantage of lameness.

The following interesting recollections of Lord Byron, when a boy at Harrow school, in Middlesex, are communicated in a letter from one of his schoolfellows: "I am almost alarmed when I think how many years ago it is since I was sent, a little urchin, to improve my morals and accomplishments at Harrow school. There were then,