-an

the Low Countries, was appointed governor of Chelsea, in 1642. He had two sons, who both died without issue; and his younger brother, Sir John, became heir. This person was made a knight of the bath at the coronation of James the first.

cations of certain sweeping energies and irresistible passions; they are fragments of a poet's dark dream of life. The very personages, vividly as they are pictured, are yet felt to be fictitious, and derive their chief power over us from their supposed connexion with the poet He had eleven sons, most of whom himself, and, it may be, with each other. The distinguished themselves by their loyalty, and law of his mind was to embody his peculiar gallantry on the side of Charles the first. Seven feelings under the forms of other men. In all of these brothers were engaged at the batle of his heroes we recognise, though with infinite Marston-moor, and four fell in defence of the modifications, the same great characteristics: a royal cause. Sir John Byron, one of the survilofty, conception of the power of mind,-a vors, was appointed to several important comintense sensibility of passion,-an almost bound-mands, and on the 26th of October, 1643, was less capacity of tumultuous emotion, - -a boast-created Lord Byron, with a collateral remainder ing admiration of the grandeur of disordered to his brothers. On the decline of the king's power, and, above all, a soul-felt delight in|affairs, he was appointed governor to the Duke of beanty. York, and, while holding this office, died without issue, in France, in 1652; upon which his brother Richard, a celebrated cavalier, became the second Lord Byron. He was governor of Appleby Castle, and distinguished himself at Newark. died in 1697, aged seventy-four, and was succeeded by his eldest son William, who married Elizabeth, the daughter of John Viscount Chaworth, of the kingdom of Ireland, by whom he had five sons, all of whom died young except William, whose eldest son, William, was born in 1722, and came to the title in 1736.

These reflections naturally precede a sketch of Lord Byron's literary and private life: they are in a manner forced upon us by his poetry, and by the sentiments of weariness of existence and enmity with the world which it so frequently expresses.

Lord Byron was descended from an illustrious line of ancestry. From the period of the Conquest, his family were not more distinguished for their extensive manors in Lancashire and other parts of the kingdom, than for their prowess in arms. John de Byron attended Edward the first in several warlike expeditions. Two of the Byrons fell at the battle of Cressy. Another member of the family, Sir John de Byron, rendered good service in Bosworth field, to the Earl of Richmond, and contributed by his valour to transfer the crown from the head of Richard the third to that of Henry the seventh. Sir John was a man of honour, as well as a brave warrior. He was very intimate with his neighbour Sir Gervase Clifton; and, although Byron fought under Henry, and Clifton under Richard, it did not diminish their friendship, though it put it to a severe test. Previous to the battle, they had mutually promised that whichever should be vanquished, the other should endeavour to prevent the forfeiture of his friend's estate. While Clifton was bravely fighting at the head of his troop, he was struck off his horse: Byron perceiving the accident, quitted the ranks and ran to the relief of his friend, who died in his arms. Sir John de Byron kept his word; he interceded with the king; and the estate, preserved to the Clifton family, is now in the possession of a descendant of Sir Gervase.

In the wars between Charles the first and the parliament, the Byrons adhered to the royal cause. Sir Nicholas Byron, the eldest brother and representative of the family, was an eminent loyalist, who, having distinguished himself in the wars of

He

William, Lord Byron, passed the early part of his life in the navy. In 1763 he was made master of the stag-hounds; and in 1765 was sent to the Tower, and tried before the House of Peers for killing his relation and neighbour, Mr Chaworth, in a duel.-The following details of this fatal event are peculiarly interesting from subsequent circumstances connected with the subject of our sketch.

William Lord Byron belonged to a club of which Mr Chaworth was also a member. It met at the Star and Garter tavern, Pall Mall, and was called the Nottinghamshire Club. On the 29th January, 1765, they assembled, at four o'clock, to dinner as usual, and every thing went on agreeably, until about seven o'clock, when an angry dispute arising betwixt Lord Byron and Mr Chaworth concerning the quantity of game on their estates, the latter gentleman paid his share of the bill, and retired. Lord Byron followed him out of the room, and, stopping him on the landing of the stairs, called to the waiter to show them into an empty room. They were shown into one, and a single candle placed on the table in a few minutes the bell was rung, and Mr Chaworth found mortally wounded. He said that Lord Byron and he entered the room together; that his lordship, in walking forward, said something relative to the former dispute, on which he proposed fastening the door; that on

greatest misery and keenest remorse on hers, was dissolved in two years by her sinking to the grave, the victim of a broken heart. About three years subsequently, Captain Byron sought to recruit his fortune by matrimony, and having made a conquest of Miss Catherine Gordon, an Aberdeenshire heiress (lineally descended from the Earl of Huntley and the Princess Jane, daugh

turning himself round from this act, he perceived after the most brutal conduct on his part, and the his lordship with his sword half drawn, or nearly so: on which, knowing his man, he instantly drew his own, and made a thrust at him, which he thought had wounded or killed him; that then, perceiving his lordship shorten his sword to return the thrust, he thought to have parried it with his left hand; that he felt the sword enter his body and go deep through his back; that he struggled, and being the stronger man, disarmed his lord-ter of James II of Scotland), he united himself to ship, and expressed some concern, as under the apprehension of having mortally wounded him; that Lord Byron replied by saying something to the like effect, adding at the same time, that he hoped he would now allow him to be as brave a man as any in the kingdom.»

For this offence he was unanimously convicted of manslaughter, but, on being brought up for judgment, pleaded his privilege as a peer, and was, in consequence, discharged. After this affair he was abandoned by his relations, and retired to Newstead Abbey; where, while he lived in a state of exile from persons of his own rank, his unhappy temper found abundant exercise in continual war with his neighbours and tenants, and sufficient punishment in their hatred. One of his amusements was feeding crickets, which he rendered so tame as to crawl over him, and used to whip them with a wisp of straw when too familiar. In this forlorn condition he lingered out a long life, doing all in his power to ruin the paternal mansion for that other branch of the family to which he was aware it must pass at his death, all his own children having descended before him to the grave.

John, the next brother to William, and born in the year after him, that is in 1723, was of a very different disposition, but his career in life was almost an unbroken series of misfortunes. The hardships he endured while accompanying Commodore Anson in his expedition to the South Seas are well known, from his own highly popular and affecting narrative. His only son, born in 1751, who received an excellent education, and held a commission in the guards, was so dissipated that he was known by the name of mad Jack Byron. He was one of the handsomest men of his time; but his character was so notorious that his father was obliged to desert him, and his company was shunned by the better part of society. In his twenty-seventh year he seduced the Marchioness of Carmarthen, who had been but a few years married to a husband, with whom she lived in the greatest happiness until the commencement of this unfortunate connexion. After a fruitless attempt at reclaiming his lady, the marquis obtained a divorce; and a marriage was brought about between her and her seducer, which,

her, ran through her property in a few years, and, leaving her and her only child, the subject of this memoir, fled to France to avoid his creditors, and died at Valenciennes, in 1791.

In Captain Medwin's « Conversations of Lord Byron," the following expressions are said to have fallen from his lordship on the subject of his unprincipled father:

I lost my father when I was only six years of age. My mother, when she was in a rage with me (and I gave her cause enough), used to say, 'Ah! you little dog, you are a Byron all over; you are as bad as your father! It was very different from Mrs Malaprop's saying, 'Ah! good dear Mr Malaprop! I never loved him till he was dead.' But, in fact, my father was, in his youth, any thing but a Cælebs in search of a wife.' He would have made a bad hero for Hannah More. He ran out three fortunes, and married or ran away with three women; and once wanted a guinea, that he wrote for: I have the note. seemed born for his own ruin, and that of the other sex. He began by seducing Lady Carmarthen, and spent for her four thousand pounds ayear; and, not content with one adventure of this kind, afterwards eloped with Miss Gordon. This marriage was not destined to be a very fortunate one either, and I don't wonder at her differing from Sheridan's widow in the play; they certainly could not have claimed 'the flitch.'"

He

George Byron Gordon (for so he was called on account of the neglect his father's family had shown to his mother) was born at Dover, on the 22d of January, 1788. On the flight of his father, the entire care of his infant years devolved upon his mother, who retired to Aberdeen, where she lived in almost perfect seclusion, on the remains of her fortune. Her undivided affection was naturally centred in her son: if he only went out for the purpose of walking she would entreat him, with the tear glistening in her eye, to take care of himself, as she had nothing on earth but him to live for; » — conduct not at all pleasing to his adventurous spirit, the more especially as such of his companions, as witnessed these affectionate scenes, were wont to laugh at and ridicule him about them. Her excessive maternal indulgence, and the absence of

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stituted his chief delight, and, to the superficial observer, seemed his sole occupation.

He was exceedingly brave, and in the juvenile

that salutary discipline and control so necessary to childhood, doubtless contributed to the formation of the less pleasing features of Lord Byron's character. It must, however, be remembered in Mrs By-wars of the school, he generally gained the vicron's extenuation', not only that the circumstances in which she had been left with her son were of a very peculiar nature, but also that a slight malformation of one of his feet, and great weakness of constitution, naturally obtained for him in the heart of a mother a more than ordinary portion of tenderness. For these latter reasons he was not sent very early to school, but was allowed to expand his lungs, and brace his limbs, upon the neighbouring mountains. This was evidently the most judicious method of imparting strength to his bodily frame; and the sequel showed that it was not the worst for giving tone and vigour to his mind. The savage grandeur of nature around him; the feeling that he was upon hills

where

Foreign tyrant never trod,
But Freedom, with her faulchion bright,
Swept the stranger from her sight;

his intercourse with a people whose chief amuse-
ment consisted in the recital of heroic tales of
other times, feats of strength, and a display of
independence, blended with the wild superna-
tural fictions peculiar to remote and thinly-peo-
pled districts, were admirably calculated to foster
that poetical feeling innate in his character.

tory. Upon one occasion, a boy pursued by another took refuge in Mrs Byron's house: the latter youth, who had been much abused by the former, proceeded to take vengeance on him on the landing-place of the drawing-room stairs, when George interposed in his defence, declaring that nobody should be ill-used while under his roof and protection. Upon this the aggressor dared him to fight, and, although the former was by much the stronger of the two, the spirit of young Byron was so determined, that after the combat had lasted nearly two hours, it was suspended only in consequence of their complete exhaustion.

A school-fellow of Byron's had a very small Shetland pony, which his father had bought for him: they went one day to the banks of the Don to bathe, but, having only the pony, they were obliged to follow the good old practice called in Scotland ride and tie.» When they came to the bridge over that dark romantic stream, Byron bethought him of the prophecy which he has quoted in Don Juan :

When George was seven years of age, his mo- He immediately stopped his companion, who was ther sent him to the grammar-school at Aber-riding, and asked him if he remembered the deen, where he remained till his removal to prophecy, saying, that as they were both only Harrow, with the exception of some intervals of sons, and as the pony might be « a mare's ae foal,» absence, which were deemed requisite for the he would ride over first, because he had only a preservation of his health. His progress beyond mother to lament him, should the prophecy be that of the general run of his class-fellows was fulfilled by the falling of the bridge; wheras the never so remarkable as after those occasional in- other had both a father and a mother. tervals of recreation, when, in a few days he would master exercises which, in the ordinary school routine, it had required weeks to accomplish. But when he had overtaken the rest of the class, he always relaxed his exertions, and, contenting himself with being considered a tolerable scholar, never made any extraordinary effort to place himself at the head of the highest form. It was only out of school that he aspired to be the leader of every thing; in all boyish games and amusements he would be first if possible. For this he was eminently calculated; quick, enterprising, and daring, the energy of his mind enabled him to overcome the impediments which nature had thrown in his way. Even at that early period (from eight to ten years of age), all his sports were of a manly character; fishing, shooting, swimming, managing a horse, or steering and trimming the sails of a boat, con

It is the custom of the grammar-school at Aberdeen, that the boys of all the five classes of which it is composed should be assembled for prayers in the public school at eight o'clock in the morning; after prayers, a censor calls over the names, and those who are absent are punished. The first time that Lord Byron had come to school after his accession to his title, the rector had caused his name to be inserted in the censor's book, Georgius Dominus de Byron, instead of Georgius Byron Gordon as formerly. The boys, unaccustomed to this aristocratic sound, set up a loud and involuntary shout, which had such an effect on his sensitive mind that he burst into tears, and would have fled from the school had he not been restrained by the master.

The answer which Lord Byron made to a fellow scholar, who questioned him as to the cause of the honorary addition of « Dominus de Byron »

to his name, served at that time, when he was cricket on the common. He was not remarkable only ten years of age, to point out that he would (nor was he ever) for his learning, but he was be a man who would speak and act for himself always a clever, plain-spoken, and undaunted ---who, whatever might be his vices or his virtues, boy. I have seen him fight by the hour like a would not condescend to receive them at second-Trojan, and stand up against the disadvantage hand. It took place the very day after he had of his lameness with all the spirit of an ancient been menaced with a flogging round the school combatant. Don't you remember your battle for a fault which he had not committed. When with Pitt?' (a brewer's son), said I to him in a the question was put to him, he replied, "It is letter (for 1 had witnessed it), but it seems that not my doing; Fortune was to whip me yesterday he had forgotten it. 'You are mistaken, I think,’ for what another did, and she has this day made said he in reply; it must have been with Riceme a lord for what another has ceased to do. 1 Pudding Morgan, or Lord Jocelyn, or one of the need not thank her in either case, for I have Douglasses, or George Raynsford, or Pryce (with asked nothing at her hands, whom I had two conflicts), or with Moses Moore (the clod), or with somebody else, and not with Pitt; for with all the above-named and other worthies of the fist had I an interchange of black eyes and bloody noses, at various and sundry periods; however it may have happened for all that.'»

On the 17th of May, 1798, William, the fifth Lord Byron, departed this life at Newstead. The son of this eccentric nobleman died when George was five years old, and as the descent both of the titles and estates was to heirs-male, the latter, of course, succeeded his great-uncle. Upon this change of fortune Lord Byron, now ten years of age, was removed from the immediate care of his mother, and placed as a ward under the guardianship of the Earl of Carlisle, whose father had married Isabella, the sister of the preceding Lord Byron. In one or two points of character this great-aunt resembled the bard: she also wrote beautiful poetry, and after adorning the gay and fashionable world for many years, she left it without any apparent cause and with perfect indifference, and in a great measure secluded herself from society.

The young nobleman's guardian decided that he should receive the usual education given to England's titled sons, and that he should in the first instance be sent to the public school at Harrow. He was accordingly placed there under the tuition of the Rev. Dr Drury, to whom he has testified his gratitude in a note to the fourth canto of Childe Harold, in a manner which does equal honour to the tutor and the pupil. A change of scene and circumstances so rapid, would have been hazardous to any boy, but it was doubly so to one of Byron's ardent mind and previous habits. Taken at once from the society of boys in ordinary life, and placed among youths of his own newly-acquired rank, with means of gratification which to him must have appeared considerable, it is by no means surprising that he should have been betrayed into every sort of extravagance: none of them appear, however, to have been of a very culpable

The annexed anecdotes are characteristic.

The boys at Harrow had mutinied, and in their wisdom resolved to set fire to the scene of all their ills and troubles the school-room. Byron, however, was against the motion, and by pointing out to the young rebels the names of their fathers on the walls, he prevented the intended conflagration. His lordship piqued himself not a little upon this early specimen of his power over the passions of his school-fellows.

Byron long retained a friendship for several of his Harrow school-comrades. Lord Clare was one of his constant correspondents; and Scroope Davies was also one of his chief companions before his lordship went to the continent. The latter gentleman and Byron once lost all their money at « chicken hazard,» in one of the hells of St. James's, and the next morning Davies sent for Byron's pistols to shoot himself with. Byron sent a note refusing to give them, on the ground that they would be forfeited as a deodand, and this comic excuse had the desired effect.

Byron, whilst living at Newstead during the Harrow vacation, saw and became enamoured of Miss Chaworth, the Mary of his poetry, and the maiden of his beautiful « Dream.» Miss Chaworth was older than his lordship by a few years, was light and volatile, and though, no doubt, highly flattered by his attachment, treated our poet less as an ardent lover than as a younger brother. She was punctual to their assignations, which took place at a gate dividing the grounds of the Byrons from the Chaworths, and received all his letters; but her answers, it is said, were written with more of the caution of coquetry than the romance of « love's young dream.» She, however, gave him her picture, but her hand was reserved for another.