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"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 300l. a year. The following is a copy of the King's warrant for the grant:(Signed)

"GEORGE R.

:

:

"WHEREAS we are graciously pleased to grant unto Catharine Gordon Byron, widow, an annuity of 3007., 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's, 2d October, 1799, 39th year of our reign.

"By His Majesty's command,
(Signed) "W. PITT.

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'S. DOUGLAS.! "EDW", ROBERTS, Dep. Cler". 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

1 [The right hon. Sylvester Douglas, afterwards Lord Glenbervie. When in his 78th year, his lordship published a translation of the first canto of Forteguerris "Ricciardetto." He died in 1823.]

2 [The illustrious physician, Dr. Matthew Baillie brother to the poetess Joanna Baillie, and brother-inlaw to Lord Chief Justice Denman — died in 1823.]

3 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

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 Sheldrake3 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 a communication with which he favoured

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me a short time before his death, “ which I have remarked to prevail in general in young persons labouring under similar defects of nature."4

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 ru by the English schools. "I found him enter diments again in one of the forms prescribed

upon his tasks," says Dr. Glennie, “with alacrity and success. He was playful, goodhumoured, 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 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

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.

4 44 Quoique," says Alfieri, speaking of his school-dayз, "je fusse le plus petit de tous les grands qui se trouvaient au second appartement où j'étais descendu, c'était précisément mon infériorité de taille, d'âge, et de force, qui me donnait plus de courage, et m'engageait à me distinguer."

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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."

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 prepos

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1[" This was a most unfortunate occurrence, and yet we do not see that it is possible to attach any serious blame to Lord Carlisle's conduct at least until we reach a later stage of the story. The immediate consequence, however, was, that Lord Byron's mind continued to ex

sessing, 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 countrywoman, 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."

The interposition of Lord Carlisle, to whose authority it was found necessary to appeal, had more than once given a check to these disturbing indulgences. 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 school-fellow 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."!

Among the books that lay accessible to the boys in Dr. 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 Aracan, in the year 1795." The writer 2 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

pand and ripen under the same unhappy influences which had withered the bloom of his infancy."- Quart. Rev. 1831.]

2 [William Mackery, son of the Rev. Thomas Mackery, minister of Lairg, in Sutherlandshire.]

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"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 instances. Mr. 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 weather-quarter gallery; and to this spot the unhappy 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

1 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, 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.

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 unfortunate 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 canvass, sunk down and rose no more; though he must have lived two days longer, as we judged from the quivering of his limbs, when a wave broke over him."1

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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. "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 grand-daughter of the two Admirals Parker), one of the most beautiful of evanescent beings. I have long forgotten the verses, but it would be difficult for me to forget her- her dark eyes - her long eye-lashes her completely Greek cast of face and figure! I was then about twelveshe 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.

"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 burden 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 'twas cast: Then he himself sunk down all dumb and shivering, And gave no sign of life, save his limbs quivering."

DON JUAN, Canto 11.

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 composed his own powerful description, the reader will find the account of the loss of the Juno here referred to.

C

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 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 rainbowall beauty and peace.

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My passion had its usual effects upon me- -I could not sleep-I could not eatI 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."

He had been nearly two years under the tuition of Dr. 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 Dr. 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."

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, Dr. Glennie had to stand no ordinary trial, having visited Geneva in 1817, soon after Lord

1 [This lady, daughter of M. Doublette, a Dutch gentleman, was married at the Hague, in 1743, to Robert D'Arcy, fourth Earl of Holderness. Upon his death, in 1778, the earldom became extinct, and what remained of

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 Dr. 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 Dr. Ewing, by whom, as a relic of genius, it is equally valued. The affectionate boy had also presented her with a full-length 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."

his estate, together with the barony of Conyers, descended to his only daughter, the first wife of the Poet's father. Lady Holderness died in London, October, 1801, aged eighty.] 2 [See Works, p. 376.]

leader in all the sports, schemes, and mischief of the school.

In the summer of the year 1801 he accompanied his mother to Cheltenham, and the account which he himself gives of his sen- For a general notion of his dispositions sations at that period shows at what an and capacities at this period, we could not early age those feelings that lead to poetry have recourse to a more trustworthy_or had unfolded themselves in his heart. A valuable authority than that of the Rev. Dr. boy, gazing with emotion on the hills at sun- Drury, who was at this time head master of set, because they remind him of the mountains the school, and to whom Lord Byron has among which he passed his childhood, is left on record a tribute of affection and already, in heart and imagination, a poet. It respect, which, like the reverential regard of was during their stay at Cheltenham that a Dryden for Dr. Busby, will long associate fortune-teller, whom his mother consulted, together honourably the names of the poet pronounced a prediction concerning him and the master. From this venerable schowhich, for some time, left a strong impression lar I have received the following brief but on his mind. Mrs. Byron had, it seems, in important statement of the impressions her first visit to this person, (who, if I which his early intercourse with the young mistake not, was the celebrated fortune- noble left upon him :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.

CHAPTER III..

1801-1805.

HARROW. ANECDOTES OF SCHOOL LIFE.

"Mr. Hanson, Lord Byron's solicitor, consigned him to my care at the age of 13, 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 enquiries 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 familiarise 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,

BOYISH FRIENDSHIPS. PEEL. — GEORGE by being placed below them. This I dis

SINCLAIR.CLAYTON, LORD CLARE.-
WILDMAN. WILLIAM HARNESS. EARLY
CORRESPONDENCE. -HARROW CHURCH

covered, 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

YARD.—BYRON'S TOMB.-SUMMER HOLI- diligence, he might rank with those of his

DAYS.-BATH.-NOTTINGHAM AND ANNES

LEY.-MISS CHAWORTH.-SOUTHWELL.

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,
66 a most
unpopular boy," he rose at length to be a

1 See page 8.

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

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