Personal Recollections of Lord Byron.

My acquaintance with Lord Byron began very early in life, on my first going to school at Harrow. I was then just twelve years old. I was lame from an early accident, and pale and thin in consequence of a severe fever, from which, though perfectly recovered in other respects, I still continued weak. This dilapidated condition of mine-perhaps my lameness more than anything else seems to have touched Byron's sympathies. He saw me a stranger in a crowd; the very person likely to tempt the oppression of a bully, as I was utterly incapable of resisting it; and, in all the kindness of his generous nature, he took me under his charge. The first words he ever spoke to me, as far as I can recollect them, were, "If any fellow bullies you, tell me; and I'll thrash him if I can." His protection was not long needed-I was soon strong again and able to maintain my own; but, as long as his help was wanted, he never failed to render it. In this manner our friendship began when we were both boys, he the elder of the two; and it continued, without the slightest interruption, till he left Harrow for Cambridge.

After this there was a temporary cessation of intercourse. We wrote to each other on his first leaving school; but the letters, as is wont to be the case, became gradually less and less communicative and frequent, till they eventually ceased altogether. The correspondence seemed to have come to a conclusion by mutual consent; till an unexpected occasion of its renewal occurred on the appearance of his first collection of poems-the Hours of Idleness. This volume contained an early essay of his satirical powers against the head-master of his late school; and very soon after its publication I received a letter from Byron-short, cold, and cutting-reproaching me with a breach of friendship, because I had, as he was informed, traduced his poetry in an English exercise, for the sake of conciliating the favour of Dr. Butler. The only answer I returned to the letter was to send him the rough copy of my theme. It was on The Evils of Idleness. After a world of puerilities and commonplaces, it concluded by warning mankind in general, and the boys of Harrow in particular, if they would avoid the vice and its evils, "to cultivate some accomplishment, that each might have an occupation of interest to engage his leisure, and be able to spend his Hours of Idleness' as profitably as our late popular schoolfellow." The return of post brought me a letter from Byron, begging pardon for the unworthiness he had attributed to me, and acknowledging that he had been misinformed. Thus our correspondence was renewed: and it was never

again interrupted till after his separation from Lady Byron and final. departure from his country.

After this renewal of our correspondence he was absent for some time in Greece; but when he returned, with the MS. of the first two cantos of Childe Harold in his portmanteau, I paid him a visit at Newstead. It was winter-dark, dreary weather-the snow upon the ground; and a straggling, gloomy, depressing, partially-inhabited place the Abbey was. Those rooms however, which had been fitted up for residence were so comfortably appointed, glowing with crimson hangings, and cheerful with capacious fires, that one soon lost the melancholy feeling of being domiciled in the wing of an extensive ruin. Many tales are related or fabled of the orgies which, in the Poet's early youth, had made clamorous these ancient halls of the Byrons. I can only say that nothing in the shape of riot or excess occurred when I was there. The only other visitor was Dr. Hodgson, the translator of Juvenal, and late Provost of Eton; and nothing could be more quiet and regular than the course of our days, Byron was retouching, as the sheets passed through the press, the stanzas of Childe Harold. Hodgson was at work in getting out the ensuing number of the Monthly Review, of which he was principal editor. I was reading for my degree. When we met, our general talk was of poets and poetry-of who could or who could not write; but it occasionally rose into very serious discussions on Religion. Byron, from his early education in Scotland, had been taught to identify the principles of Christianity with the extreme dogmas of Calvinism. His mind had thus imbibed a most miserable prejudice, which appeared to be the only obstacle to his hearty acceptance of the Gospel. Of this error we were most anxious to disabuse him. The chief weight of the argument rested with Hodgson, who was older, a good deal, than myself. And I cannot even now-at a distance of more than fifty years-recall those conversations without a deep feeling of admiration for the judicious zeal and affectionate earnestness (often speaking with tears in his eyes) which Dr. Hodgson evinced in his advocacy of the truth. The only difference, except perhaps in the subjects talked about, between our life at Newstead Abbey and that of the quiet country families around us, was the hours we kept. It was, as I have said, winter, and the days were cold; and, as nothing tempted us to rise early, we got up late. This flung the routine of the day rather backward, and we did not go early to bed. My visit to Newstead lasted about three weeks, when I returned to Cambridge to take my degree.

From this time our paths in life lay much asunder. Byron returned to London. His poem was published. The success was instantaneous; and "he awoke one morning and found himself famous." I was in Orders, and living an almost solitary life in a country curacy; but we kept up a rather rapid change of letters. He sent me his

poems as they now appeared in rather quick succession; and during my few weeks' holidays in London we saw one another very often of a morning at each other's rooms, and not unfrequently again in society. of an evening. So far, and for these few years, all that I saw or heard of his career was bright and prosperous: kindness and poetry at home, smiles and adulation abroad. But then came his marriage; and then the rupture with his wife; and then his final departure from England, under that revulsion of popular feeling which is ever incident to the spoilt children of society, when envy and malice obtain a temporary ascendancy, and succeed in knocking down and trampling any idol of the day beneath their feet who may be wanting in the moral courage required of the man who would face and out-brave them.

Such was not the spirit that animated Byron. He could not bear to look upon the altered countenances of his acquaintance. To his susceptible temperament and generous feelings, the reproach of having ill-used a woman must have been poignant in the extreme. It was repulsive to his chivalrous character as a gentleman; it belied all that he had written of the devoted fervour of his attachments; and rather than meet the frowns and sneers which awaited him in the world, as many a less sensitive man might have done, he turned his back upon them and fled. He would have drawn himself up, and crossed his arms and curled his lip, and looked disdainfully on any amount of clamorous hostility; but he stole away from the ignominy of being silently cut. His whole course of conduct, at this crisis of his life, was an inconsiderate mistake. He should have remained, to learn what the accusations against him really were; to expose the exaggerations, if not the falsehood, of the grounds they rested on; or, at all events, to have quietly abided the time when the London world should have become wearied of repeating its vapid scandals, and returned to its senses respecting him. That change of feeling did come, and not long after his departure from England; but he was at a distance, and could not be persuaded to return to take advantage of it.

Of the matrimonial quarrel, I personally know nothing; nor, with the exception of Dr. Lushington, do I believe that there is anybody living who has any certain knowledge about the matter. The marriage was never one of reasonable promise. The bridegroom and the bride were ill-assorted. They were two only children, and two spoilt only children. I was acquainted with Lady Byron as Miss Milbank. The parties of Lady Milbank, her mother, were frequent and agreeable, and composed of that mixture of fashion, literature, science, and art, than which there is no better Society. The daughter was not without a certain amount of prettiness or cleverness; but her manner was stiff and formal, and gave one the idea of her being self-willed and selfopinionated. She was almost the only young, pretty, well-dressed girl I ever saw who carried no cheerfulness along with her. I seem to see

her now, moving slowly along her mother's drawing-rooms, talking to scientific men and literary women, without a tone of emotion in her voice or the faintest glimpse of a smile upon her countenance. A lady who had been on intimate terms with her from their mutual childhood once said to me, "If Lady Byron has a heart, it is deeper seated and harder to get at than anybody else's heart whom I have ever known." And though several of my friends whose regard it was no slight honour to have gained-as Mrs. Siddons, Joanna Baillie, Maria Edgeworth, and others of less account-were never heard to speak of Lady Byron except in terms of admiration and attachment, it is certain that the impression which she produced on the majority of her acquaintance was unfavourable: they looked upon her as a reserved and frigid sort of being whom one would rather cross the room to avoid than be brought into conversation with unnecessarily. Such a person, whatever quality might at first have attracted him-(could it have been her coldness ?)—was not likely to acquire or retain any very powerful hold upon Byron. At the beginning of their married life, when first they returned to London society together, one seldom saw two young persons who appeared to be more devoted to one another than they were. At parties, he would be seen hanging over the back of her chair, scarcely talking to anybody else, eagerly introducing his friends to her, and, if they did not go away together, himself handing her to her carriage. This outward show of tenderness, so far as my memory serves me, was observed and admired as exemplary, till after the birth of their daughter. From that time the world began to drop its voice into a tone of compassion when speaking of Lady Byron, and to whisper tales of the misery she was suffering-poor thing-on account of the unkindness of her husband.

The first instances of his ill-usage which were heard were so nsignificant as to be beneath recording. "The poor lady had never had a comfortable meal since their marriage." "Her husband had no fixed hour for breakfast, and was always too late for dinner." "At his express desire, she had invited two elderly ladies* to meet them in her opera-box. Nothing could be more courteous than his manner to them while they remained; but no sooner had they gone than he began to annoy his wife by venting his ill-humour, in a strain of bitterest satire, against the dress and manners of her friends." "There were some relations of Lady Byron, whom, after repeated refusals, he had reluctantly consented to dine with. When the day arrived, he insisted on her going alone, alleging his being unwell as an excuse for his absence. It was summer-time. Forty years ago, people not only dined earlier than they do now, but by daylight; and after the assembled party were seated at table, he amused himself by driving backwards and

* Mrs. Joanna Baillie and her sister.

forwards opposite the dining-room windows."* There was a multitude of such nonsensical stories as these, which one began to hear soon after little Ada's birth; and I believe I have told the worst of them. No doubt, as the things occurred, they must have been vexatious enough, but they do not amount to grievous wrongs. They are faults of temper— not moral delinquencies; a thousand of them would not constitute an injury. Nor does one know to what extent they may have been provoked. They would, in all probability, have ceased, had they been gently borne with-and, perhaps, were only repeated because the culprit was amused by witnessing their effects. At all events they were no more than a sensible woman, who had either a proper feeling for her husband's reputation, or a due consideration of her own position, would have readily endured; and a really good wife would never have allowed herself to talk about them. And yet it was by Lady Byron's friends, and as coming immediately from her, that I used to hear them. The complaints, at first so trifling, gradually acquired a more serious character. "Poor Lady Byron was afraid of her life." "Her husband slept with loaded pistols by his bedside, and a dagger under his pillow.'" Then there came rumours of cruelty-no one knew of what kind, or how severe. Nothing was definitely stated. But it was on all hands allowed to be "very bad―very bad indeed.” to be known, everybody imagined what they pleased.

And as there was nothing

But whatever Lord Byron's treatment of his wife may have been, it could not have been all evil. Any injuries she suffered must have occurred during moody or angry fits of temper. They could not have been habitual or frequent. His conduct was not of such a description as to have utterly extinguished whatever love she might have felt at their marriage, or to have left any sense of terror or aversion behind it. This is evident from facts. Years after they had met for the last time, Lady Byron went with Mrs. Jameson, from whom I repeat the circumStance, to see Thorwaldsen's statue of her husband, which was at Sir Richard Westmacott's studio. After looking at it in silence for a few moments, the tears came into her eyes, and she said to her companion, "It's very beautiful, but not so beautiful as my dear Byron." However interrupted by changes of caprice or irritability, the general course of her husband's conduct must have been gentle and tender, or it never would, after so long a cessation of intercourse, have left such kindly impressions behind it. I have, indeed, reason to believe that these feelings of affectionate remembrance lingered in the heart of Lady Byron to the last. Not a fortnight before her death, I dined in company with an old lady, who was at the time on a visit to her. On this lady's returning home, and mentioning whom she had met, Lady Byron evinced great curiosity to learn what subjects we had talked about, and what

The above gossip all came to me from different friends of Lady Byron.