The following anecdotes relating to the same topic are from Mr. Moore: speaking of his attachment, at the age of little more than sixteen, to Miss Chaworth (afterwards Mrs. Musters), he says:

“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 course, on account of the name) his especial favourite. During all this time he had the pain of knowing that the 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 Even as a brother—but no more.’ 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 schoolboy. 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 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 this 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. 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.”

When more advanced in years, viz. nineteen, we are told:

“In his attention to his person and dress, to the becoming arrangement of his hair, and to whatever might best show off the beauty with which nature had gifted him, he manifested, even thus early, his anxiety to make himself pleasing to that sex, who were from first to last, the ruling stars of his destiny. The fear of becoming, what he was naturally inclined to be, enormously fat, had induced him, from his first entrance at Cambridge, to adopt, for the purpose of reducing himself, a system of violent exercise and abstinence, together with the frequent use of warm-baths. But the embittering circumstance of his life,—that, which haunted him, like a curse, amidst the buoyancy of youth, and the anticipations of fame and pleasure, was, strange to say, the trifling deformity of his foot. By that one slight blemish (as in his moments of melancholy he persuaded himself) all the blessings that nature had showered upon him were counterbalanced. His reverend friend, Mr. Becher, finding him one day unusually dejected, endeavoured to cheer and rouse him by representing, in their brightest colours, all the various advantages with which Providence had endowed him,—and, among the greatest, that of ‘a mind which placed him above the rest of mankind.’ ‘Ah, my dear friend,’ said Byron, mournfully,—‘if this (laying his hand on his forehead) places me above the rest of mankind, that (pointing to his foot) places me far, far below them.’”

We have dwelt perhaps too much on this point; but it had so momentous an influence on Byron’s fate and genius, that it becomes a matter of great interest. Exempt from the mortifications to which his lameness subjected his sensitive spirit, he might have been a gay and heedless reveller in the fashionable circles, instead of the immortal bard: indeed, it is evident that he never would have been the latter, but for the morbid and misanthropic temperament, and the actual consequences at home and abroad, of which this defect laid the foundations. We now revert to other matters.

Of the ancestors, &c. of the noble Lord, we shall say nothing; but quote the writer’s deduction, after describing them, their eccentricities, their fierce resentments, their good qualities, and their deeds.

“In reviewing thus cursorily the ancestors, both near and remote, of Lord Byron, it cannot fall to be remarked how strikingly he combined in his own nature some of the best and, perhaps, worst qualities that lie scattered through the various characters of his predecessors,—the generosity, the love of enterprise, the high-mindedness of some of the better spirits of his race, with the irregular passions, the eccentricity, and daring recklessness of the world’s opinion, that so much characterized others.”

His mother’s marriage was an unfortunate one;—and on the 22d of January, 1786, George, her only son, was born, in Holies Street, London. That Lord B., like almost all persons of genius, was somewhat inclined to superstition, the following will shew.

“In reference to the circumstance of his being an only child, Lord Byron, in one of his journals, mentions some curious coincidences in his family, which to a mind disposed as his was to regard every thing connected with himself as out of the ordinary course of events, would naturally appear even more strange and singular than they are. ‘I have been thinking,’ he says, ‘of an odd circumstance. My daughter (1), my wife (2), my half-sister (3) my mother (4), my sister’s mother (5), my natural daughter (6), and myself (7), are, or were, all only children. My sister’s mother (Lady Conyers) had only my half-sister by that second marriage (herself, too, an only child), and my father had only me, an only child, by his second marriage with my mother, an only child too. Such a complication of only children, all tending to one family, in singular enough, and looks like fatality almost,’ He then adds, characteristically, ‘But the fiercest animals have the fewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, and even elephants, which are mild in comparison.’ * * *

“In addition to the natural tendency to superstition, which is usually found connected with the poetical temperament, Lord Byron had also the example and influence of his mother, acting upon him from infancy, to give his mind this tinge. Her implicit belief in the wonders of second sight, and the strange tales she told of this mysterious faculty, used to astonish not a little her sober English friends; and it will be seen, that, at so late a period as the death of his friend Shelley, the idea of fetches and forewarnings, impressed upon him by his mother, had not wholly lost possession of the poet’s mind. As an instance of a more playful sort of superstition, I may be allowed to mention a slight circumstance told me of him by one of his Southwell friends. This lady had a large agate bead, with a wire through it, which had been taken out of a barrow, and lay always in her work-box. Lord Byron asking, one day, what it was, she told him that it had been given her as an amulet, and the charm was, that, as long as she had this bead in her possession, she should never be in love. ‘Then give it to me,’ he cried, eagerly, ‘for that’s just the thing I want.’ The young lady refused;—but it was not long before the bead disappeared. She taxed him with the theft, and he owned it; but said, she never should see her amulet again. * * *

“When he first went to Newstead, on his arrival from Aberdeen, he planted, it seems, a young oak in some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as it flourished so should he. Some six or seven years after, on revisiting the spot, he found his oak choked up by weeds, and almost destroyed. In this circumstance, which happened soon after Lord Grey de Ruthen left Newstead, originated one of these poems, which consists of five stanzas, but of which the few opening lines will be a sufficient specimen:— ‘Young Oak, when I planted thee deep in the ground, I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine; That thy dark-waving branches would flourish around, And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine. Such, such was my hope, when, in infancy’s years, On the land of my fathers I rear’d thee with pride; They are past, and I water thy stem with my tears,— Thy decay not the weeds, that surround thee, can hide. I left thee, my Oak, and, since that fatal hour, A stranger has dwelt in the Hall of my Sire,’ &c. &c.

“At Newstead (when he arrived there at ten years of age), both the mansion and the grounds around it were suffered to fall helplessly into decay; and among the few monuments of either care or expenditure which their lord left behind, were some masses of rockwork, on which much cost had been thrown away, and a few castellated buildings on the banks of the lake and in the woods. The forts upon the lake were designed to give a naval appearance to its waters, and frequently, in his more social days, he used to amuse himself with sham fights,—his vessels attacking the forts, and being cannonaded by them in return. The largest of these vessels had been built for him at some seaport on the eastern coast, and, being conveyed on wheels over the Forest to Newstead, was supposed to have fulfilled one of the prophecies of Mother Shipton, which declared that ‘when a ship laden with ling should cross over Sherwood Forest, the Newstead Estate would pass from the Byron family.’ In Nottinghamshire, ‘ling’ is the term used for heather; and, in order to bear out Mother Shipton and spite the old lord, the country people, it is said, ran along by the side of the vessel, heaping it with heather all the way.”

Elsewhere we have other examples of this disposition. Of Captain Kidd, with whom he sailed to Lisbon in 1809, he used to mention a strange story.

“This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his limbs, and, there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he thought, distinctly, the figure of his brother, who was, at that time, in the naval service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform and stretched across the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion of the senses, he shut his eyes and made an effort to sleep. But still the same pressure continued, and still, as often as he ventured to take another look, he saw the figure lying across him in the same position. To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to touch this form, he found the uniform, in which it appeared to be dressed, dripping wet. On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished; but in a few months after, he received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had been drowned in the Indian seas. Of the supernatural character of this appearance, Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have the slightest doubt.”

Of his Lordship’s infancy, Mr. M. says: “That, as a child, his temper was violent, or rather sullenly passionate, is certain. Even when in petticoats he shewed the same uncontrollable spirit with his nurse, which he afterwards exhibited, when an author, with his critics. Being angrily reprimanded by her, one day, for having soiled or torn a new frock in which he had been just dressed, he got into one of his ‘silent rages’ (as he himself has described them), seized the frock with both his hands, rent it from top to bottom, and Mood in sullen stillness, setting his censurer and her wrath at defiance. But, notwithstanding this, and other such unruly outbreaks—in which he was but too much encouraged by the example of his mother, who frequently, it is said, proceeded to the same extremities with her caps, gowns, &c.—there was in his disposition, as appears from the concurrent testimony of nurses, tutors, and all who were employed about him, a mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness, by which it was impossible not to be attached; and which rendered him then, as in his riper years, easily manageable, by those who loved and understood him sufficiently to be at once gentle and firm enough for the task. * * *

“His love of solitary rambles, and his taste for exploring in all directions, led him not unfrequently so far as to excite serious apprehensions for his safety. While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home unperceived;—sometimes he would find his way to the seaside; and once, after a long and anxious search, they found the adventurous little rover struggling in a sort of morass or marsh, from which he was unable to extricate himself. In the course of one of his summer excursions up Dee-side, he had an opportunity of seeing still more of the wild beauties of the Highlands than even the neighbourhood of their residence at Ballatrech afforded,—having been taken by his mother through the romantic passes that lead to Invercauld, and as far up as the small waterfall, called the Linn of Dee. Here his love of adventure had nearly cost him his life. As he was scrambling along a declivity that overhung the fall, some heather caught his lame foot and he fell. Already he was rolling downward when the attendant luckily caught hold of him, and was but just in time to save him from being killed. It was about this period, when he was not quite eight years old, that a feeling partaking more of the nature of love than it is easy to believe possible in so young a child, took, according to his own account, entire possession of his thoughts and showed how early, in this passion, as in most others, the sensibilities of his nature were awakened.* The name of the object of this attachment was Mary Duff; and the following passage from a Journal, kept by him in 1813, will show how freshly, after an interval of seventeen years, all the circumstances of this early love still lived in his memory. ‘I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word. And the effect!—My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, ‘Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, from Miss Abercromby, and your old sweetheart Mary Duff is married to a Mr. Coe.’ And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into convulsions, and alarmed my mother so much, that, after I grew better, she generally avoided the subject—to me—and contented herself with telling it to all her acquaintance. Now, what could this be? I had never seen her since her mother’s faux-pas at Aberdeen had been the cause of her removal to her grandmother’s at Banff; we were both the merest children. I had and have been attached fifty times since that period; yet I recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses, her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness, my tormenting my mother’s maid to write for me to her, which she at last did, to quiet me. Poor Nancy thought I was wild, and, as I could not write for myself, became my secretary. I remember, too, our walks, and the happiness of sitting by Mary, in the children’s apartment, at their house not far from the Plainstones at Aberdeen, while her lesser sister Helen played with the doll, and we sate gravely making love, in our way. How the deuce did all this occur so early? where could it originate? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my misery, my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke—it nearly choked me—to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the recollection (not the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as ever. I wonder if she can have the least remembrance of it or me? or remember her pitying sister Helen for not having an admirer too? How very pretty is the perfect image of her in my memory—her brown, dark hair, and hazel eyes; her very dress! I should be quite grieved to see her now; the reality, however beautiful, would destroy, or at least confuse, the features of the lovely Peri which then existed in her, and still lives in my imagination, at the distance of more than sixteen years. I am now twenty-five and odd months. I think my mother told the circumstances (on my hearing of her marriage) to the Parkynses, and certainly to the Pigot family, and probably mentioned it in her answer to Miss A., who was well acquainted with my childish penchant, and had sent the news on purpose for me,—and, thanks to her! Next to the beginning, the conclusion has often occupied my reflections, in the way of investigation. That the facts are thus, others know as well as I, and my memory yet tells me so, in more than a whisper. But, the more I reflect, the more I am bewildered to assign any cause for this precocity of affection.’”

Without at present entering into the author’s opinions respecting the first inspirations of the noble poet, we shall quote what he states of their first fruits—(1798).

“It was about this period, according to his nurse, May Gray, that the first symptom of any tendency towards rhyming showed itself in him; and the occasion which she represented as having given rise to this childish effort was as follows. An elderly lady, who was in the habit of visiting his mother, had made use of some expression that very much affronted him, and these slights, his nurse said, he generally resented violently and implacably. The old lady had some curious notions respecting the soul, which, she imagined, took its flight to the moon after death, as a preliminary essay before it proceeded further. One day, after a repetition, it is supposed, of her original insult to the boy, he appeared before his nurse in a violent rage. ‘Well, my little hero,’ she asked, ‘what’s the matter with you now?’ Upon which the child answered, that ‘this old woman had put him in a most terrible passion—that he could not bear the sight of her,’ &c. &c.—and then broke out into the following doggerel, which he repeated over and over, as if delighted with the vent he had found for his rage:— ‘In Nottingham county there lives at Swan Green, As curst an old lady as ever was seen; And when she does die, which I hope will be soon, She firmly believes she will go to the moon.’ It is possible that these rhymes may have been caught up at second-hand; and he himself, as will presently be seen, dated his ‘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.”

From his first poetry we naturally slide into his first love, with the childish exception before excepted.

“It was, probably, during one of the vacations of this year (1800), 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 granddaughter 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

* “Dante, we know, was but nine years old when, at a May-day festival, he saw and fell in love with Beatrice; and Alfieri, who was himself a precocious lover, considers such early sensibility to be an unerring sign of a soul formed for the fine arts:— ‘Effetti (he says, in describing the feelings of his own first love) che poche persone intendono, e pochissime provano: ma a quel soli pochissimi è concesso l’uscir dalla folla volgare in tutte le umane arti.’ Canova used to say, that he perfectly well remembered having been in love when but five years old.”

At Aberdeen till ten years old; thence to Newstead, on succeeding to his title; two years with Dr. Glennie, at his academy at Dulwich; Harrow school till seventeen; and Trinity College, Cambridge, for about three years,—are data which we need only indicate, as more important matters demand our regards. Of his school life he has preserved many notes, whence his biographer has made many interesting selections.

“Coming, as they do, from his own pen, it is needless to add, that they afford the liveliest and best records of this period that can be furnished. ‘Till I was eighteen years old (odd as it may seem) I had never read a Review. But while at Harrow, my general information was so great on modern topics as to induce a suspicion that I could only collect so much information from Reviews, because I was never seen reading, but always idle, and in mischief, or at play. The truth is, that I read eating, read in bed, read when no one else read, and had read all sorts of reading since I was five years old, and yet never met with a Review, which is the only reason I know of why I should not have read them. But it is true; for I remember when Hunter and Curzon, in 1804, told me this opinion at Harrow, I made them laugh by my ludicrous astonishment in asking them ‘What is a Review?’ To be sure, they were then less common. In three years more, I was better acquainted with that name; but the first I ever read was in 1806-7. At school I was (as I have said) remarked for the extent and readiness of my general information; but in all other respects idle, capable of great sudden exertions (such as thirty or forty Greek hexameters, of course with such prosody as it pleased God), but of few continuous drudgeries. My qualities were much more oratorical and martial than poetical, and Dr. Drury, my grand patron (our head master), had a great notion that I should turn out an orator, from my fluency, my turbulence, my voice, my copiousness of declamation, and my action*. I remember that my first declamation astonished him into some unwonted (for he was economical of such) and sudden compliments, before the declaimers at our first rehearsal. My first Harrow verses (that is, English, as exercises), a translation of a chorus from the Prometheus of Æschylus, were received by him but coolly. No one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy. Peel, the orator and statesman (‘that was, or is, or is to be’), was my form-fellow, and we were both at the top of our remove (a public-school phrase). We were on good terms, but his brother was my intimate friend. There were always great hopes of Peel, amongst us all, masters and scholars—and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar he was greatly my superior; as a declaimer and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal; as a schoolboy, out of school, I was always in scrapes, and he never; and in school, he always knew his lesson, and I rarely,—but when I knew it, I knew it nearly as well. In general information, history, &c. &c. I think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my standing. The prodigy of our school-days was George Sinclair (son of Sir John); he made exercises for half the school (literally), verses at will, and themes without it. * * * He was a friend of mine, and in the same remove, and used at times to beg me to let him do my exercise,—a request always most readily accorded upon a pinch, or when I wanted to do something else, which was usually once an hour. On the other hand, he was pacific and I savage; so I fought for him, or thrashed others for him, or thrashed himself to make him thrash others, when it was necessary, as a point of honour and stature, that he should so chastise;—or we talked politics, for he was a great politician, and were very good friends. I have some of his letters, written to me from school, still. Clayton was another school-monster of learning, and talent, and hope; but what has become of him I do not know. He was certainly a genius. My school-friendships were with me passions (for I was always violent), but I do not know that there is one which has endured (to be sure some have been cut short by death) till now. That with Lord Clare begun one of the earliest and lasted longest—being only interrupted by distance—that I know of. I never hear the word ‘Clare’ without a beating of the heart even now, and I write it with the feelings of 1803-4-5 ad infinitum.’ * * *

“The general character which he bore among the masters at Harrow was that of an idle boy, who would never learn any thing; and, as far as regarded 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 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 familiarized with their meaning to trust himself without this aid. Thus, in his Xenophon we find νεοι, young—σομασιν, bodies—ανϑζωποις 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 χρυσος 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 wasted*, 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 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. * * *

“To a youth like Byron, abounding with the most passionate feelings, and finding sympathy with only the ruder parts of his nature at home, the little world of school afforded a vent for his affections, which was sure to call them forth in their most ardent form. Accordingly, the friendships which he contracted both at school and college were little less than what he himself describes them, ‘passions.’ The want he felt at home of those kindred dispositions, which greeted him among ‘Ida’s social band,’ is thus strongly described in one of his early poems:†— ‘Is there no cause beyond the common claim, Endear’d to all in childhood’s very name? Ah! sure some stronger impulse vibrates here, Which whispers, friendship will be doubly dear To one who thus for kindred hearts must roam, And seek abroad the love denied at home; Those hearts, dear Ida, have I found in thee, A home, a world, a paradise to me.’ This early volume, indeed, abounds with the most affectionate tributes to his school-fellows. Even his expostulations to one of them, who had given him some cause for complaint, are thus tenderly conveyed:— ‘You knew that my soul, that my heart, my existence, If danger demanded, were wholly your own; You knew me unalter’d by years or by distance, Devoted to love and to friendship alone. ‘You knew—but away with the vain retrospection, The bond of affection no longer endures. Too late you may droop o’er the fond recollection, And sigh for the friend who was formerly yours.’ The following description of what he felt after leaving Harrow, when he encountered in the world any of his old schoolfellows, falls far short of the scene which actually occurred but