s, as Sterne and others have
found it, and tells us that the great part of the books named were perused
before the age of fifteen. Making allowance for the fact that most of the
poet's autobiographic sketches are emphatically _"Dichtang und Wahrheit,"_
we can believe that he was an omnivorous reader--"I read eating, read in
bed, read when no one else reads"--and, having a memory only less
retentive than Macaulay's, acquired so much general information as to be
suspected of picking it up from Reviews. He himself declares that he never
read a Review till he was eighteen years old--when, he himself wrote one,
utterly worthless, on Wordsworth.

At Harrow, Byron proved himself capable of violent fits of work, but of
"few continuous drudgeries." He would turn out an unusual number of
hexameters, and again lapse into as much idleness as the teachers would
tolerate. His forte was in declamation: his attitude and delivery, and
power of extemporizing, surprised even critical listeners into unguarded
praise. "My qualities," he says, "were much more oratorical and martial
than poetical; no one had the least notion that I should subside into
poesy." Unpopular at first, he began to like school when he had fought his
way to be a champion, and from his energy in sports more than from the
impression produced by his talents had come to be recognized as a leader
among his fellows. Unfortunately, towards the close of his course, in
1805, the headship of Harrow changed hands. Dr. Drury retired, and was
succeeded by Dr. Butler. This event suggested the lines beginning,--

Where are those honours, Ida, once your own,
When Probus fill'd your magisterial throne?

The appointment was generally unpopular among the boys, whose sympathies
were enlisted in favour of Mark Drury, brother of their former master, and
Dr. Butler seems for a time to have had considerable difficulty in
maintaining discipline. Byron, always "famous for rowing," was a
ringleader of the rebellious party, and compared himself to Tyrlaeus. On
one occasion he tore down the window gratings in a room of the
school-house, with the remark that they darkened the hall; on another he
is reported to have refused a dinner invitation from the master, with the
impertinent remark that he would never think of asking him in return to
dine at Newstead. On the other hand, he seems to have set limits to the
mutiny, and prevented some of the boys from setting their desks on fire by
pointing