as something to make verses
upon. Had I married Miss Chaworth, perhaps the whole tenor of my
life would have been different; she jilted me, however, but her
marriage proved anything but a happy one." It is to this attachment
that we are indebted for the beautiful poem of The Dream, and the
stanzas beginning
Oh, had my fate been joined to thine!
Although this love affair a little interfered with his Greek and
Latin, his time was not passed without some attention to reading.
Until he was eighteen years old, he had never seen a review; but his
general information 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, however, a devourer of books; he read
eating, read in bed, read when no one else read, and had perused all
sorts of books from the time he first could spell, but had never read
a review, and knew not what the name implied.
It should be here noticed, that while he was at Harrow, his qualities
were rather oratorical than poetical; and if an opinion had then been
formed of the likely result of his character, the prognostication
would have led 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, remarkable. The late Duke of Dorset
was his fag, and he was not considered a very hard taskmaster. He
certainly did not carry with him from Harrow any anticipation of that
splendid career he was destined to run as a poet.
CHAPTER V
Character at Harrow--Poetical Predilections--Byron at Cambridge--His
"Hours of Idleness"
In reconsidering the four years which Byron spent at Harrow, while we
can clearly trace the development of the sensibilities of his
character, and an increased tension of his susceptibility, by which
impressions became more acute and delicate, it seems impossible not
to perceive by the records which he has himself left of his feelings,
that something morbid was induced upon them. Had he not afterwards
so magnificently distinguished himself as a poet, it is not probable
that he would have been recollected by his schoolfellows as having
been in any respect different from the common herd. His activity and
spirit, in their controversies and quarrels, were but the
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