HARROW. 27 years my elder), and-and- -and-what has been the result?" her, much personal beauty, and a disposition the most amiable and attaching. Though already fully alive to her charms, it was at In the dances of the evening at Matlock, the period of which we are speaking that Miss Chaworth, of course, joined, while her the young poet, who was then in his six-lover sat looking on, solitary and mortified. teenth year, while the object of his admiration 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 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: 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?"" 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 favourite. During all this time he had the "Her sighs were not for him; to her he was "When I was fifteen years of age, it hap-course, on account of the name) his especial pened 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 steṛn, 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 мY? 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 1 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, 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 school-boy. 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 So seen by the dying lamp's fitful light, 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 his 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 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.1 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 ["This is beautifully expressed, and the sentiment is true to nature; but we cannot think it peculiarly applicable to the Dream.' The old hall of Annesley is not a common object, in itself, and still less so is the ancient oratory.' A maiden and a youth,' are doubtless common objects; but have not such common objects many millions of times-are they not the only themes, of all most impassioned song? As to the lover's 'steed,' - no more poetical animal going than a horse! Had his lordship been about to mount a mule, or take his departure on a donkey, it might have required all his genius to throw an undying lustre over that object' and 'that event.' The reader might have thought of Peter Bell. With regard to the race-ground of Nottingham, as a portion of the earth's surface, it is not unromantic, but quite the reverse; merely as a race-ground, it will be neither the better nor the worse of Byron's Dream.' Let Mr. Moore, the next time he philosophises on the power of poetical genius to shed undying lustre on the commonest objects and events,' turn from Byron in all his glory, to Wordsworth in all his-and then he will be 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 which, in his poem of "The Dream," he describes so happily as "crowned with a peculiar diadem." No one, he declared, could have told how much he felt 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 3," -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, I henceforth must resign? I ask but to forget." 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?'— just to Nature and to her chosen Bard."—Blackwood, 1830.] 2 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, "Now no more, the hours beguiling, [See Works, p. 384.] 3 The lady's husband, for some time, took her family name. 4 These stanzas, I have since found, are not Lord Byron's, but the production of Lady Tuite, and are contained in a volume published by her Ladyship in the year 1795.- Second Edition. HARROW. '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." 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." The ". rebelling," of which he here speaks, (though it never, I believe, proceeded to any act of violence,) took place on the retirement of Dr. Drury from his situation as head master, when three candidates for the vacant chair presented themselves,-Mark Drury, Evans, and Butler. On the first movement to which this contest gave rise in the school, young | Wildman was at the head of the party for Mark Drury, while Byron at first held himself aloof from any. Anxious, however, to have him as an ally, one of the Drury faction said to Wildman-"Byron, I know, will not join, because he doesn't choose to act second to any one, but, by giving up the leadership to him, you may at once secure him." This Wildman accordingly did, and Byron took the command of the party. The violence with which he opposed the election of Dr. 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. Unhappily their opportunities of collision were the more frequent from Byron's 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 enter 1 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 on; the mild, peaceful Addison was, when at school, the successful leader of a barring-out, 2 This anecdote, which I have given on the testimony of one of Lord Byron's schoolfellows, Dr. Butler himself assures me, has but very little foundation in fact.-Second Edition. 29 tained 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 back a refusal, which rather surprising Dr. Butler, he, on the first opportunity that occurred, inquired of him, in the presence of the other boys, his motive for this step: "Have you any other engagement?"-"No, sir."- "But you must have some reason, Lord Byron."—66 "I have.". —66 What is it?" "Why, Dr. Butler," replied the young peer, with proud composure, "if you should happen to come into my neighbourhood when I was staying at Newstead, I certainly should not ask you to dine with me, and therefore feel that I ought not to dine with you.” 2 The general character which he bore among the masters at Harrow was that of an idle boy, who would never learn anything; and, as far as regarded his tasks in school, this reputation was, by his own avowal, not illfounded. It is impossible, indeed, to look through the books which he had then in use, and which are scribbled over with clumsy interlined translations, without being struck with the narrow extent of his classical attainments. The most ordinary Greek words have their English signification scrawled under them, showing too plainly that he was not sufficiently familiarised with their meaning to trust himself without this aid. Thus, in his Xenophon we find veo, young— μaoi, bodies - ανθρωποις τοις αγαθοις, good men, &c. &c.. - and even in the volumes of Greek plays which he presented to the library on his departure, we observe, among other instances, the common word xрvooc provided with its English representative in the margin. But, notwithstanding his backwardness in the mere verbal scholarship, on which so large and precious a portion of life is wasted3, in all that general and miscellaneous knowledge which is alone useful in the world, he was making rapid and even wonderful progress. With a mind too inquisitive and excursive to be imprisoned within statutable limits, he flew to subjects that interested his already manly tastes, with a zest which it is 3 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. in vain to expect that the mere pedantries of school could inspire; and the irregular, but ardent, snatches of study which he caught in this way, gave to a mind like his an impulse forwards, which left more disciplined and plodding competitors far behind. The list, indeed, which he has left on record of the works, in all departments of literature, which he thus hastily and greedily devoured before he was fifteen years of age, is such as almost to startle belief, comprising, as it does, a range and variety of study, which might make much older "helluones librorum" hide their heads. Not to argue, however, from the powers and movements of a mind like Byron's, which might well be allowed to take a privileged direction of its own, there is little doubt, that to any youth of talent and ambition, the plan of instruction pursued in the great schools and universities of England, wholly inadequate as it is to the intellectual wants of the age, presents an alternative of evils not a little embarrassing. Difficult, nay, utterly impossible, as he will find it, to combine a competent acquisition of useful knowledge with that round of antiquated studies which a pursuit of scholastic honours requires, he must either, by devoting the whole of his attention and ambition to the latter object, remain ignorant on most of those subjects upon which mind grapples with mind in life, or by adopting, as Lord Byron and other distinguished persons have done, the contrary system, consent to pass for a dunce or idler in the schools, in order to afford himself even a chance of attaining eminence in the world. leaf of his "Scriptores Græci," we find, in "Eheu fugaces, Posthume! Posthume! "B. January 9th, 1809.-Of the four The vacation of 18044 he passed with his mother at Southwell, to which place she had removed from Nottingham, in the summer of this year, having taken the house on the Green called Burgage Manor. There is a Southwell play-bill extant, dated August 8th, 1804, in which the play is announced as bespoke "by Mrs. and Lord Byron." The gentleman, from whom the house where they resided was rented, possesses a library of some extent, which the young poet, he says, ransacked with much eagerness on his first coming to Southwell; and one of the books that most particularly engaged and interested him was, as may be easily believed, the life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, CHAPTER IV. 1805-1807. -COLLEGE From the memorandums scribbled by the FRIENDSHIPS.-VISIT ΤΟ SOUTHWELL. 1 "A finished scholar may emerge from the head of Westminster or Eton in total ignorance of the business and conversation of English gentlemen in the latter end of the eighteenth century." — Gibbon. 2" Byron, Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex, Alumnus Scholæ Lyonensis primus in anno Domini 1801, Ellison Duce." "Monitors, 1801.-Ellison, Royston, Hunxman, Rashleigh, Rokeby, Leigh." 66 In the month of October, 1805, he was removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, and his feelings on the change from his beloved 3 64 Drury's Pupils, 1804.- Byron, Drury, Sinclair, Hoare, Bolder, Annesley, Calvert, Strong, Acland, Gordon, Drummond." 4 During one of the Harrow vacations, he passed some time in the house of the Abbé de Roufigny, in Took'scourt, for the purpose of studying the French language; but he was, according to the Abbé's account, very little given to study, and spent most of his time in boxing, fencing, &c., to the no small disturbance of the reverend teacher and his establishment. CAMBRIDGE. Ida to this new scene of life are thus described by himself: "When I first went up to college, it was a new and a heavy-hearted scene for me: firstly, I so much disliked leaving Harrow, that though it was time (I being seventeen), it broke my very rest for the last quarter with counting the days that remained. I always hated Harrow till the last year and a half, but then I liked it. Secondly, I wished to go to Oxford, and not to Cambridge. Thirdly, I was so completely alone in this new world, that it half broke my spirits. My companions were not unsocial, but the contrary-lively, hospitable, of rank and fortune, and gay far beyond my gaiety. I mingled with, and dined, and supped, &c., with them; but, I know not how, it was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy."1 But though, for a time, he may have felt this sort of estrangement at Cambridge, to remain long without attaching himself was not in his nature; and the friendship which he now formed with a youth named Eddleston, who was two years younger than himself, even exceeded in warmth and romance all his schoolboy attachments. This boy, whose musical talents first drew them together, was, at the commencement of their acquaintance, one of the choir at Cambridge, though he afterwards, it appears, entered into a mercantile line of life; and this disparity in their stations was by no means without its charm for Byron, as gratifying at once both his pride and good-nature, and founding the tie between them on the mutually dependent relations of protection on the one side, and gratitude and devotion on the other;-the only relations, according to Lord Bacon, in which the little friendship that still remains in the world is to be found. It was upon a gift presented to him by Eddleston, that he wrote those verses entitled "The Cornelian," which were printed in his first, unpublished volume, and of which the following is a stanza : 1 "Some, who can sneer at friendship's ties, Have for my weakness oft reproved me; Yet still the simple gift I prize, For I am sure the giver loved me." ["Who with the weight of years would wish to bend, When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy? Ah! happy years! once more, who would not be a boy?" Childe Harold, c. ii. st. 23.] 2 Between superior and inferior, "whose fortunes (as he expresses it) comprehend the one and the other." [See Works, p. 398.] 4 [The Cleon of " Childish Recollections: ""Now last, but nearest, of the social band, See honest, open, generous Cleon stand; 31 Another friendship, of a less unequal kind, which had been begun at Harrow, and which he continued to cultivate during his first year at Cambridge, is thus interestingly dwelt upon in one of his journals : · "How strange are my thoughts! - The reading of the song of Milton, Sabrina fair,' has brought back upon me— I know not how or why-the happiest, perhaps, days of my life (always excepting, here and there, a Harrow holiday in the two latter summers of my stay there) when living at Cambridge with Edward Noel Long+, afterwards of the Guards,-who, after having served honourably in the expedition to Copenhagen (of which two or three thousand scoundrels yet survive in plight and pay), was drowned early in 1809, on his passage to Lisbon with his regiment in the St. George transport, which was run foul of in the night by another transport. We were rival swimmers-fond of riding reading- and of conviviality. We had been at Harrow together; butthere, at least-his was a less boisterous spirit than mine. I was always cricketing - rebelling-fighting-rowing (from row, not boat-rowing, a different practice), and in all manner of mischiefs; while he was more sedate and polished. At Cambridge-both of Trinity-my spirit rather softened, or his roughened, for we became very great friends. The description of Sabrina's seat reminds me of our rival feats in diving. Though Cam's is not a very translucent wave, it was fourteen feet deep, where we use to dive for, and pick up-having thrown them in on purpose-plates, eggs, and even shillings. I remember, in particular, there was the stump of a tree (at least ten or twelve feet deep) in the bed of the river, in a spot where we bathed most commonly, round which I used to cling, and 'wonder how the devil I came there.' "Our evenings we passed in music (he was musical, and played on more than one instrument, flute and violoncello), in which I was audience; and I think that our chief beverage was soda-water. In the day we rode, bathed, and lounged, reading occasionally. I remember our buying, with vast alacrity, Moore's new quarto 6 (in 1806), and reading it together in the evenings. With scarce one speck to cloud the pleasing scene, On the same day our studious race begun ; 5 ["Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair," &c.] 6 [" Epistles, Odes, and other Poems; by Thomas Moore, Esq."] |