sent to a day-school in Aberdeen, where he made but slim
attainments. Though excitable and ill-disciplined, he is said to have
been affectionate and generous, and perfectly fearless. A fit of
sickness rendered his removal from this school necessary, and he was
sent to a summer resort among the Highlands. His early impressions were
therefore favorable to the development of the imagination, coming as
they did from mountains and valleys, rivulets and lakes, near the
sources of the Dee. At the age of eight, he wrote verses and fell in
love, like Dante at the age of nine.

On the death of the grandson of the old Lord Byron in 1794, this
unpromising youth became the heir-apparent to the barony. Nor did he
have to wait long; for soon after, his grand-uncle died, and the young
Byron, whose mother was struggling with poverty, became a ward of
Chancery; and the Earl of Carlisle--one of the richest and most powerful
noblemen of the realm, a nephew by marriage of the deceased peer--was
appointed his guardian. This cold, formal, and politic nobleman took but
little interest in his ward, leaving him to the mismanagement of his
mother, who, with her boy, at the age of ten, now removed to Newstead,
the seat of his ancestors,--the government, meanwhile, for some reason
which is not explained, having conferred on her a pension of L300
a year.

One of the first things that Mrs. Byron did on her removal to Newstead
was to intrust her son to the care of a quack in Nottingham, in order to
cure him of his lameness. As the doctor was not successful, the boy was
removed to London with the double purpose of effecting a cure under an
eminent surgeon, and of educating him according to his rank; for his
education thus far had been sadly neglected, although it would appear
that he was an omnivorous reader in a desultory kind of way. The
lameness was never cured, and through life was a subject of bitter
sensitiveness on his part. Dr. Glennie of Dulwich, to whose instruction
he was now confided, found him hard to manage, because of his own
undisciplined nature and the perpetual interference of his mother. His
progress was so slow in Latin and Greek that at the end of two years, in
1801, he was removed to Harrow,--one of the great public schools of
England, of which Dr. Drury was head-master. For a year or two, owing to
that constitutional shyness which is so often mistaken for pride, young
Byron made but few friendships, although he had for school-fe