The Life of Lord Byron

ere-Love for Miss Chaworth-H

and mischiefs of his schoolfellows; but it never could be said that he was a popular boy, however much he was distinguished for spirit and bravery; for if he was not quarrelsome, he was sometimes vindictive. Still it could not have been to any inveterate degree; for,

e he had made but little progress; and it was chiefly in consequence of his backwardness that he was removed from his academy. Wh

athy was not all on one side; nor will it be easy to parallel the conduct of the Earl with that of any guardian. It is but justice, therefore, to Byron, to make the public aware that

mstance as to this subject, which we record with the more pleasure, because Byron has been blamed, and has

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 made no remark; as to the latter, I

d piquant epigrams among others, there is a poetical effusion of her pen addressed to Mrs Greville, on her Ode to Indifference, which, at the time, was much admired, and has been, with other poems of her Ladyship's, published in Pearch's collection. After moving, for a lon

cluse in pri

ed after him, that he might go about his business, for she did not care two skips of a louse for him. On coming to the hall, finding paper and in

publications as paper books. It is, however, said that they nevertheless showed some talent, and that The

ry to encourage him, he never became an eminent scholar; at least, we have his own testimony to that effect, in the fourth

ill his reco

classic raptu

h Latin echoe

onquer, for t

l lesson forced

youth with ple

fect, he makes the following

bit of having them hammered into us at eight years old, as an exercise not of mind but of memory; so that when we are old enough to enjoy them, the taste is gone, and the appetite palled. In some parts of the Continent, young persons are taught from mere common authors, and do not read the best classics until their maturity. I certainly do not speak on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place of my education. I was not a slow or an idle boy; and I believe no one could be more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and with reason: a part of the time passed there was th

d Addison deemed it an inexpiable error, that boys with genius or without were all to be bred poets indiscriminately. As far, then, as respects the education of a poet, we should think that the names of Milton, Cowley, Addison, and Byron would go well to settle the question; especially when it is recollected how little Shakspeare was indebted to the study of the classics, and that Burns knew nothing of them at all. I do not, however, adopt the opinion as corr

tion, is a most dangerous doctrine indeed; since it strikes at the root, not only of all pure taste, but of all praiseworthy industry. It would, if acted upon (as Harold by the ment

e taste or adds to the vigour of the understanding; and, therefore, before the soundness of the opinion of Milton, of Cowley, of Addison, and of many other great men can be rejected, it fa

on terms of more than common civility, scarcely those. She was the beau ideal of all that my youthful fancy could paint of the beautiful! and I have taken all my fables about the celestial nature of women from the perfection my imagination created in her. I say created, for I found her, like the rest of the sex, anything but angelic. I returned to Harrow, after my trip to Cheltenham, more deeply enamoured than ever, and passed the next holidays at Newstead. I now began to fancy myself a man, and to make love in earnest. Our meetings were stolen ones, and my letters passed through the medium of a c

ate been joi

n was so extensive on modern topics, as to induce a suspicion that he could only have collected so much information from reviews, as he was never seen reading, but always idle, and in mischief, or at play. He was, howe

d to the expectation of an orator. Altogether, his conduct at Harrow indicated a clever, but not an extraordinary boy. He formed a few friendships there, in which his attachment appears to have been, in some instances,