Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets Part 32

Ballater, though a neat village now, did not exist when Byron was here.

There were a few cottages for the use of visitors, near the other side of the present bridge, but those who came to drink the waters generally located themselves in farm-houses as near as they could to "the wells,"

which are two miles down the opposite bank of the Dee. Mrs. Byron chose her summer residence in one of the most thoroughly-secluded and out-of-the-world spots which it was possible to find, perhaps, in the whole island. It lies four miles below Ballater, on the same side of the river as the spring, that is, two miles beyond "the wells," as they call them, some chalybeate springs which issue from the hills, and which now bring many people to Ballater in summer. You proceed to them along the feet of the hills, and at the feet, also, of a dark pine wood. The river is below you; above you are these mountain forests, and the way lies sometimes through the wood. Under beeches which shade the way, there are benches set at intervals, so that a more charming walk, with the n.o.ble mountain views opposite to you, can not well be conceived. At about two miles on the road, after pa.s.sing under stupendous dark cliffs that show themselves above the craggy and steep forest, you find a couple of rows of houses, and here are the waters issuing out of pipes into stone basins. Going still forward, you come out upon the wild moorlands. Above you, on the right hand, rise the desolate hills; below, on the left, wanders on the Dee, amid its birch woods; and the valley is one of those scenes of chaotic beauty, which perhaps the Highlands only show. It is a sea of heath-clad little hills, sprinkled with the light green birch-trees, and here and there a dark Scotch fir. It is a fairy land of purple beauty, such as seems to belong to old romance, and where the people of old romance might be met without wonder. And through all goes the sound of the river like a distant ocean. Those who have been in the Highlands know and recollect such scenes, so carpeted with the crimson heather, so beautified with the light-hued, fairy birch woods. Still the way leads on till you come down to the Dee, where it makes a wide and splendid sweep deep below the bank on which you are, and then you wonder where can be Bellatrich, the house you seek, for you see no house at all! In the birch wood, however, you now discern one white cottage, and that must be it. No! To that cottage I went, and out came a woman with spectacles on and her Bible open in her hand. I asked if she could tell me where Bellatrich was, and I expected her to say "Here!" but she replied, in a low, quiet voice, "I will show you, for it is not easy to find." And so on we went for another quarter of a mile, when, coming to a little hidden valley running at right angles from the river up into the moorlands, she showed me a smoke rising above the trees, and told me there I should find the house.

And here was the place to which Byron's mother used to _retire_ in the summer months from Aberdeen with her boy. The valley is divided by a wild brook hidden among green alders, and its slopes are hung with the native birch and a few oaks. At the upper end stands a farm-house, but this is new, and the farmer, to show me the house in which Byron lived, took me into his farm-yard. The house Mrs. Byron inhabited is now a barn, or sort of hayloft rather, in his yard. It was exactly one of the one-storied, long Highland huts, and is now included in the quadrangle of his farm-yard; but the bed in which Byron used to lie is still there.

It is one of the deal, cupboard sort of beds that are common in Highland huts. There it stands among his straw. He says many people come to see the place, and several have tried to buy the bed from him, but that he should think it quite a shame to sell it.

Imagine, then, Mrs. Byron living here upward of forty years ago, and Byron a boy of about ten years of age; soon after which he left for England, to be converted out of a poor Highland boy into a lord. There was probably another hut or so near, as there is now, but that was all.

The house they lived in was but a hut itself. There was no Ballater then. That has sprung up under the management of Mr. Farquarson, the laird of Ballater. There was only the water issuing from the moorland rocks, and no house at it, but those few huts near Ballater Bridge, where Lords Panmure and Kennedy, and some of their jovial companions, notorious up here, used to come and to drink the waters, in order to remedy their drinking too much whisky. There was no carriage road then.

There was no cultivated meadow. All was moorland, and woods, and wild mountains. There was a rude road at the margin of the river, but so stony that no carriage could exist upon it. Nay, this present farmer says that when he came to live here, within these ten years, there was no road into this little hidden valley. There was no bridge over the brook, but they went through amid the great stones, and that without taking any trouble to put them aside. There was no garden, and there was no field. Around rose, as they do now, dark moorland mountains, and the little black-faced sheep, and the black cattle roamed over the boggy, heathery, and birch-scattered valley, as they do still, except within the little circle of cultivation that the present tenant has made.

What a place for a civilized woman and her only son! How he got so far around as he did is to me a miracle. He got up the valley quite to Braemar, and there was no carriage road thither! There was no turnpike road from Aberdeen further than to Banchory, half way to Ballater, forty-six years ago, and that then made, was the first turnpike road in Aberdeens.h.i.+re. So a gentleman of Aberdeen a.s.sured me. Further, all was a mere track, in which a horse could go. Yet the boy Byron, with his lame feet, and very lame he was, according to those who knew him, and plenty of such remain, rambled all about this wild region. The pa.s.sion with which he traversed those scenes is expressed in his poem to Mary Duff, the equally-beloved object of his boyish heart.

"When I roved a young Highlander on the dark heath, And climbed thy steep summit, oh Morven! of snow, To gaze on the torrent that thundered beneath, Or the mist of the tempest that gathered below; Untutored by science, a stranger to fear, And rude as the rocks where my infancy grew, No feeling, save one, to my bosom was dear, Need I say, my sweet Mary, 'twas centered in you?

"Yet it could not be love, for I knew not the name-- What pa.s.sion can dwell in the heart of a child?

But still I perceive an emotion the same As I felt when a boy in the crag-covered wild.

One image alone on my bosom impressed, I loved my bleak regions, nor panted for new; And few were my wants, for my wishes were blessed, And pure were my thoughts, for my soul was with you.

"I arose with the dawn; with my dog for my guide, From mountain to mountain I bounded along: I breasted the billows of Dee's rus.h.i.+ng tide, And heard at a distance the Highlander's song," &c.

That he was intensely happy here, the poetry and memories of his whole life testify. That he must have strolled far and wide, and, as he says, with his dog for his guide, is no doubt true; but, lame as he was, it appears little less than miraculous. "I mind him weel," said a shepherd still living in the valley near the farm; "he was just such a boy as yon," pointing to a boy of eleven or twelve, "and used to play about wi'

us here. His feet were _both_ turned in, and he used to lift one over the other as he walked; and when he ran he would sometimes catch one against the other, and tumble over neck and heels. We heard that in England he had got his feet straightened."

How such a boy could get about there, over the rough heath and up the distant mountains, is strange enough. We do not hear that he had any pony, and there were only his mother or the maid to accompany him. Mrs.

Byron, by all accounts, was not well-fitted for much walking, far less climbing up hills; yet it is quite certain that he rambled far and wide, and, it is most probable, alone. Loch na Garr, Morven, and Culbleen are the grand features of the mountain scenery, and it is evident that the wild and beautiful solitudes of the Dee-side, and the mountains around, had made a deep and indelible impression on his imagination. It is just the scenery to awake the poet, where the soul and the organization of the poet exist. The deep solitude; the stern mountains, with all their changes of storm and suns.h.i.+ne, now blazing and burning out in all the brightness of a clear sun, now softly beaming beneath the slanting light of evening, and now black as midnight beneath a gloomy sky, looking awfully forth from their sable and yet transparent veil of shadow.

These, and the sound of waters, and the mild beauty of the low, heath-clad hills and soft glens, where the birch hangs its weeping and fragrant branches over the lovely harebell and the secret nest of the grouse, were the imagery which surrounded the boy Byron during the summer months; and the boy "was father to the man," seeking out ever afterward, from land to land, all that was lovely and sublime in nature.

But he was now called upon to say,

"Adieu, then, ye hills, where my childhood was bred.

Thou sweet flowing Dee, to thy waters adieu!"

and the scene changed to England; solitude to cities; poverty to fortune; and the nameless obscurity of the juvenile mountain wanderer to t.i.tle and unimagined fame.

Before, however, quitting this favorite scene of the early life of Byron, which he never again visited, I must notice it under the aspect which it happened to present to me from the particular time of my arrival. It was on the 18th of August, just one week after the commencement of the grouse-shooting season, and every inn on the road was crowded with sportsmen and their servants. Lord Castlereagh, on his way to his shooting-ground in Braemar, was my next neighbor on the mail from Aberdeen; and his wide acquaintance with the sports of various countries, the _capercailzie_ and bear-shooting of the north of Europe, in particular of Russia, made his descriptions of them, as well as of the deer-shooting of Braemar--his particular sport--very interesting.

But the weather of that wet summer was at this time outrageously rainy, and from every wayside inn the lugubrious faces of sportsmen were visible. As we drew up at the village of Banchory, the window was thronged with livery-servants, and a gentleman at an open upper window, eyeing anxiously the showery clouds hanging upon the hills, caught sight of Lord Castlereagh, and called out, in a tone of momentary animation quickly relapsing into melancholy, "Ha, Ca.s.s! are you there? Here I have been these four days, and nothing but this confounded rain. Not a foot have I yet been able to set upon the heath. There are six of us."

"Who is that who addresses you so familiarly?"

"Oh! it is Sir John Guest!" Poor Sir John! What a purgatory!

On went the coach. At Ballater again thronged was the door with livery-servants; the rain was falling in torrents; there were nine shooting gentlemen in the house, not one of whom could stir out. After taking luncheon, Lord Castlereagh went with the mail to Braemar, and I, with expanded umbrella, issued forth to explore the neighborhood as well as I might, but was speedily driven back again by the deluging rains, which made every highway an actual river. The next day was Sunday, and the sun rose with a beauty and warmth which seemed to say, "Gentlemen sportsmen, you shall at least have fair weather for church." A more glorious day never was sent down over mountain and moorland; and few are the scenes on which fine summer weather confers a greater beauty than on those around Ballater. Along these fine valleys, the country people, all health and animation, in cordial conversation streamed along to and fro from church. I climbed the dark moorland hills, where the wild flocks scudded away at the presence of a stranger, and the grouse rose up in whole coveys, with a startling whirr and strange cries, and gazed down into the vales on the most lovely little homesteads, on their crimson heathery knolls, amid their beautiful little woodlands of birch. Above arose on every side the solemn and dreary bulks of Loch na Garr, Morven, and Culbleen. It was a day and a scene among a thousand. Night fell; morning again--rose Monday morning! Hundreds of anxious sportsmen throughout the Highlands, and thousands of their anxious attendants, eager for a chance for the hills--

"And the rain fell as though the world would drown!"

When I looked out of my bed-room window, there were men and boys standing in front of the inn, casting dreary looks at the ragged and low-sweeping curtains of clouds that shrouded every hill, and then longing looks at the windows, if the slightest possible breaks in those clouds occurred, hoping to be called and engaged as guides and game-carriers on the hills. Keepers were walking about, and bringing bags of shot in. Men and boys, already looking wet and dirty, as if they had tramped with their strong shoes some distance out of the country to come hither, asked them if they thought it would take up; and they cast knowing looks at the clouds and shook their heads. But anon! as if in very desperation, there were dogs let loose, which ran helter-skelter over the bridge toward the hills, full of eager life for the sport; and gigs full of gentlemen, three or four together, packed close, in white hats, or glazed and turned-up wide-awakes, and their shooting-jackets close b.u.t.toned up, with their guns erect at their sides, setting off for their shooting-grounds. They were determined to be at their stations, perhaps some ten miles off, and take the chance of a change in the weather. Good luck to them!

I took my way back again to Aberdeen; and lo! at Banchory the inn door still crowded with livery-servants, and poor Sir John Guest still seated at the selfsame window, with long and melancholy face watching the clouds! Truly the sporting, not less than the Christian life, has its crosses and its mortifications.

Lord Byron's first journey in England was with his mother, to see his ancestral abode--his abbey and estate of Newstead. It was a considerable step from the rooms over the shop at Aberdeen, or the little hut at Ballatrich, with 123 a year; but yet, for a lord, it was no very magnificent subject of contemplation. The estate had been dreadfully denuded of wood, and showed a sandy nakedness of meager land, the rental of a great part of which would be high at ten s.h.i.+llings an acre. The old abbey was dilapidated, and menacing in various places to tumble in. The gardens were a wilderness of neglect:

"Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle; Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay; In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle Have choked up the rose which late bloomed in the way."

The place was, after a time, let to Lord Grey de Ruthyn, who let ruin take its course, as the old lord had done. When the old lord died, the host of crickets which he had fed are said to have taken immediate flight, issuing forth in such a train that the servants could scarcely move without treading on them. When Lord Grey's lease was out, he and his hounds took their flight in like manner; but this was some years afterward, and for the present Mrs. Byron betook herself to Nottingham, and placed her son under the care of Mr. Rogers, the princ.i.p.al schoolmaster there, and under that of a quack, one Lavender, to straighten his feet. Thence they removed to London, where they resided in Sloane Terrace, and Byron was sent to Dr. Glennie's school at Dulwich. Thence he was removed to Harrow, and during the years he spent there Mrs. Byron went to reside again at Nottingham, and afterward at Southwell, with occasional visits to Bath and Cheltenham. Harrow and Cambridge were, of course, for the chief part of the years of his minority, his proper homes, but the vacations were chiefly spent at Southwell, with frequent visits to Newstead and Annesley. Before his minority, however, expired, Lord Grey de Ruthyn had quitted Newstead, leaving it in a deplorable state of dilapidation, and Lord Byron incurred great expense in repairing the abbey, much, indeed, beyond the reach of his resources. His income was small; for the best part of his ancestral property had been sold by the late lord, especially the Rochdale estate, which was afterward recovered. The allowance for his education was all that he could claim from his trustees, and his mother's small income was eked out by a pension of 300 per annum. The debts incurred by him for the repairs of Newstead not being legally recoverable, as they were incurred by a minor, remained for years unpaid; and the importunities of his creditors were one of the strongest motives for his early traveling abroad. The failure of his hope of marrying Miss Chaworth, and adding her estate, which adjoined his own, to Newstead, was, both in affection and in point of fortune, a severe blow. His embarra.s.sments finally compelled him to sell Newstead, and to make a _marriage de convenance_, which, to a person of his peculiar temperament, habits, and opinions, was certain to result in trouble and disunion. From these causes his life became unsettled and imbittered, and scarcely had he reached the period at which his fame ought to have made his native land the proudest and happiest of all lands to him, when he abandoned it forever, and

"In the wilds Of fiery climes he made himself a home, And his soul drank their sunbeams: he was girt With strange and dusky aspects: he was not Himself like what he had been: on the sea And on the sh.o.r.e he was a wanderer."

_The Dream_, vol. x., p. 249.

Of Newstead and Annesley I have given a particular account in The Rural Life of England. To these I must refer, and have only to add that, in the hands of Lord Byron's old schoolfellow, Colonel Wildman, Newstead is restored and maintained as all lovers of English genius would wish it to be, and is ever open to their survey. Since that account, too, the old hall of Annesley has undergone a renovation, and that scene of melancholy, desertion, and decay there described, exists now only in the volume which recorded it. In the present paper Southwell and Harrow will chiefly demand our attention.

Southwell, during the period of his Harrow school-life, became a most favorite resort of his. His mother had settled down there. Body and mind were now in progress of expansion toward manhood. His relish for society, his love of fame, and his love of poetry, were every day more and more developing themselves. But his world yet was only the school world. He was shy in general society. Here, however, he formed a group of friends of superior taste and education, in whose quiet little circle he became speedily at home, and for a time into this circle he seemed to throw himself, with all his heart and youthful enthusiasm. The Pigotts, the Beechers, the Leacrofts, &c., were his friends. Here he used to spend his summer vacations; here, it seems, he spent nearly the whole of one year. His dogs, his horses, firing at marks, swimming, and private theatricals, were his amus.e.m.e.nts, and for a time Southwell was his world. The Pigotts were his great friends, and there he went in and out, spent his evenings or spent his days, to his great contentment. A wider and a gayer world had not yet opened upon him, and for a season Southwell and his friends there were every thing to him. Of course, in this little circle he was the great hero; it is not often that a little Cathedral town can catch a live lord; nothing could be done without him; every flattering attention awaited him; and for a time he was not too conversant with the great world for the little one of Southwell to be spoiled to him. Hence he made occasional visits to Newstead and Annesley, with whose heiress he had fallen deeply in love. Here he began to cultivate more sedulously the composition of poetry, in which he was warmly encouraged by his most intimate friends, the Pigotts and Mr.

Beecher, all persons of very refined taste, and here, eventually, he put his first volume to press, with Ridge, a printer at Newark. It was from Southwell that he made an excursion to Scarborough with his young friend Mr., since Dr. Pigott, and was much smitten with a fair Quakeress, to whom he addressed the verses published in his Hours of Idleness. But he had not been long at Cambridge, and seen something too of London, before the charm of Southwell had vanished, and we find him protesting that he hated Southwell. "Oh! Southwell, Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee, and how I curse the heavy hours I dragged along, for so many months, among the Mohawks who inhabit your kraals!" During the time that he spent there, his hours certainly did not drag very heavily. It was only on looking back from a gay scene that they appeared so to him. No one who now visits that quiet village will be surprised that a scene so still, though so naturally pleasant, could not long hold a spirit of so restless a caste. For, by his own experience,

"Quiet to quick spirits is a h.e.l.l."

Most of his old friends have long left the place. Dr. Pigott, to practice at Nottingham; others are dead. Miss Pigott still lives in the house which her society and music made so agreeable to him. Mr. Beecher too still lives, and has not lived without setting the stamp of his mind on the age. To him we are, in fact, indebted for the New Poor Law. Long before the old act was rescinded, he resolved to test its powers, and he proved that if exerted they were equal to the utmost necessity of the country. He and his friend, the Rev. Mr. Lowe, of Bingham, enforced these powers in their respective parishes, where the poor's rates had grown to an equality with the rental, and the spirit of pauperism showed itself in its worst shape, that of the demoralized indolence and insolence of the young and able-bodied laborers. These gentlemen began by adopting the plan of refusing any relief to such except in the shape of labor. They insisted on all such as they pleased coming into the house, and there carried out the plan of separating husbands, wives, and children. The uproar that this produced was terrible. The people threatened to destroy the authors of this scheme, and demolish their property. Soldiers were obliged to be called in at Bingham, and finally the magistrates triumphed. The paupers were reduced to obedience, and the parish rates fell to a nominal sum. These facts and results were published by Mr. Beecher in a pamphlet, which, falling into Lord Brougham's hands, became the seed of the New Poor Law. The merits of that law do not claim discussion here; it was only necessary to point out this great fact of the life of that early friend of Lord Byron, whose influence was so great with him as to induce him to commit his first volume to the flames.

In the summer of 1845 I paid a visit to Southwell. The day, for a wonder, was fine, for a more rainy or cold June never pa.s.sed. The little town looked very pleasant in its quietness. Every one knows how a Cathedral town does look; all asleep in the suns.h.i.+ne, if suns.h.i.+ne there be. A few shops, that seem to be expecting customers sometimes; a large inn, that must, too, have visitors sometimes, or it could not exist. A number of pleasant villas in their pleasant gardens, full of roses, and green plots not shaven quite so close as in greater and smarter places, amid a great deal of greenness every where in gardens, crofts, and meadows. The old minster standing aloft in venerable and profoundly silent majesty, in its ample green burial-ground.

The minster at Southwell is much finer than I had supposed. It has three square towers; two at the west end, and one, I think, near the east. It is Saxon; has fine, zigzag archway doors at the west, and also at the north and south porches. In the north porch, each side is lined with those crossed arches, which form pointed arches, and are supposed to have first discovered them to the builders. The outer walls have also zigzag bands. The windows have been inserted, many of them, since the minster was built. Some are early English; some of the Perpendicular Order; but there are also round-headed ones, and round-headed blank arches on the walls of the tower. All is in perfect taste, according to the time in which the work was done, and is kept in excellent preservation. The inside is particularly neat, and the reading-desk is a bra.s.s eagle, which, having been found at the bottom of the lake at Newstead, where it is supposed to have been thrown at the dissolution of the abbey by the monks, would be an object on which Lord Byron would look with great interest. It contained writings connected with the estate, which the angry monks might wish to destroy.

We looked into the ruins of the old palace adjoining the minster yard, where Cardinal Wolsey was entertained on his last journey to York, and found ourselves in a lovely garden, the walls of which were the gray and irregular ruins of this ancient fabric, and the house running along one side of it, evidently, though old, built partly up out of its material.

Every one knows how charming such an old house looks. Its low range, its irregular windows, its front partly overhung with roses, jasmines, and figs; the open porch, and the peeps of goodly pictures, or rather the frames of the pictures, rich curtains, and furniture--the attributes of wealth; and the greensward of the court garden filling with its velvet the area between the old and rugged walls.

Under the obliging guidance of Dr. Calvert, I went round to see the people with whom Byron used to a.s.sociate; unfortunately, Miss Pigott was in London. We had a glimpse of her entrance-hall, and that was all. The house is one of those old-fas.h.i.+oned, rather darkish houses, that one sees in such places, and in the hall were heaps of busts, apparently phrenological specimens, and so on.

We went then to the house where Byron's mother lived. It is at the opposite end of the town, or village. It is called Burgage Manor, and stands on the top of a sloping green, called Burgage Green, very pleasantly, and at the back looking over a pleasant stretch of country toward Farnsfield. The house is a good, large, and pleasant house, but has, it seems, been considerably enlarged since Mrs. Byron lived in it; in fact, another half built to it in front. Unluckily, the lady who now inhabits it was absent too, so that we could learn nothing particular about it. It was undergoing painting, and we entered it, and walked about the lower rooms, which are just good, pleasant, modern rooms. The hall has a number of middling portraits, apparently belonging to the lady's family. A Mary Childers; several ladies of the name of Mace, a Rev. Jackson, without a Mr., a John, or Thomas to his name; just thus--Rev. Jackson, a sandy-haired, schoolmaster-looking man, leaning on his elbow, and apparently trying to look very full of calculation. One picture was very funny. It was that of a little girl of about five or six years old, in an old-fas.h.i.+oned dress, and her hair dressed in a very wiggish fas.h.i.+on, and apparently powdered. She occupied the center of the picture, and stood facing you, and on each hand a white rabbit was partly rearing up and looking at her, and under the three figures stood their names--MARY MACE, MARY BURTON, and MARY BEECHER. No doubt there was some story connected with them. I suppose Mary Mace and Mary Beecher were play-fellows of the little girl, and that she had called her two white rabbits after them.

Near this house, but on the opposite side of the green, or, rather, of this corner of the green, is the house of Major Leacroft. This is the house where Byron used to join in private theatricals. The family which he was acquainted with is gone; the proprietor dead; and this Major Leacroft is another sort of man, a wealthy recluse, and collector of pictures.

In going from one place to another, we went round by the Greet, the stream in which Byron used to bathe, and where he dived for a lady's thimble, which he took from her work-box and threw in. The Greet is a mere brook, and for the most part so shallow that a man would much sooner crack his skull in it than dive very deep, unless it were above the mill, where the water is dammed up, or just below the mill-wheel by the bridge, but that is too public, being in the high road. Such is Southwell, in Nottinghams.h.i.+re, which will always be livingly a.s.sociated with one of the happiest periods of the life of Lord Byron.

Harrow being so near the metropolis, will naturally draw many visitors, as another of the happiest scenes of Byron's youthful life. Here he represents himself to have been eminently happy, and always looked back to this period of his youth with particular affection. The school-room where he studied, the tomb where he used to sit in the church-yard, and the spot where his natural daughter, Allegra, is buried, will always excite a lively interest. This tomb is still called by the boys at Harrow, "Byron's tomb," and its ident.i.ty is very accurately fixed by himself in a letter to Mr. Murray, when giving direction for the interment of his daughter. "There is a spot in the churchyard, near the footpath, on the brow of the hill looking toward Windsor, and a tomb under a large tree, bearing the name of Peachie or Peachy, where I used to sit for hours and hours when a boy. This was my favorite spot; but as I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better be deposited in the church. Near the door, on the left hand as you enter, there is a monument, with a tablet containing these words:

'When Sorrow weeps o'er Virtue's sacred dust, Our tears become us, and our grief is just: Such were the tears she shed, who grateful pays This last sad tribute of her love and praise.'

I recollect them after seventeen years, not from any thing remarkable in them, but because from my seat in the gallery I had generally my eyes toward that monument. As near as convenient I could wish Allegra to be buried, and on the wall a marble tablet placed, with these words:

In Memory of Allegra, Daughter of G. G. Lord Byron, Who died at Bagna Cavallo, In Italy, April 20th, 1822, aged five years and three months.

'I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.'

2d Samuel, xii., 23."

These are interesting landmarks to the visitor, who will find the path to the tomb beneath the large elm well tracked, and the view there over the far-stretching country such as well might draw the musing eyes of the young poet. Captain Medwin says he saw the name of Byron "carved at Harrow in three places, in very large characters--a presentiment of his future fame, or a pledge of his ambition to acquire it." The play-ground and cricket-ground will also be visited with equal interest. There we see in these a new and eager generation of fine lads at play, and then we have a lively idea of what Byron and his cotemporaries were at that time, now less than forty years ago. No one was a more thorough schoolboy, in all the enjoyment of play and youthful pranks, than Lord Byron, as he himself, in verses addressed to one of his school comrades, shows us, and as all his schoolfellows testify of him.

"Yet when confinement's lingering hour was done, Our sports, our studies, and our souls were one: Together we impelled the flying ball, Together waited in our tutor's hall; Together joined in cricket's manly toil, Or shared the produce of the river's spoil; Or plunging from the green declining sh.o.r.e, Our pliant limbs the buoyant waters bore: In every element, unchanged, the same, All, all that brothers should be, but the name."

But the whole of this poem, called Childish Recollections, published in the Hours of Idleness, is filled by the charms of recollected school delights at Harrow. Here his schoolfellows, among others, were Lord Clare, for whom, through life, he retained the warmest attachment, Lord Delaware, the Duke of Dorset, to whom he addressed one of his early poems, Colonel Wildman, who afterward purchased Newstead, Lord Jocelyn, the Rev. William Harness, &c. He says, "P. Hunter, Curson, Long, Tattersall, were my princ.i.p.al friends. Clare, Dorset, Colonel Gordon, De Bath, Claridge, and John Wingfield, were my juniors and favorites."