ne'er will be forgot,
Shall burst the bondage of the grave."

Several other compositions belonging to the same period prove that this
child, who was so unambitious, and devoid of the usual sort of
emulation, did, however, desire to excel in great and virtuous things.
In his adieu to the seat of his ancestors, he says, that,--

"Far distant he goes, with the same emulation,
The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget.
That fame, and that memory still will he cherish;
He vows that he ne'er will disgrace your renown;
Like you will he live, or like you will he perish."

And when the Rev. Mr. Beecher, his friend and guide during the college
vacation passed at Southwell, reproached him with not going enough into
the world, young Byron answered, that retirement suited him better, but
that when his boyhood and years of trial should be over, if the senate
or the camp claimed his presence, he should endeavor to render himself
worthy of his birth:--

"Oh! thus, the desire in my bosom for fame
Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise;
Could I soar with the phoenix on pinions of flame,
With him I could wish to expire in the blaze."

But the fame to which he aspired was not literary fame. Garlands weaved
on Mount Parnassus had no perfume for him, and to seek after them would
have appeared in his eyes a frivolous, unmeaning pastime. This severe
and unjust judgment, this sort of antipathy, could they have been a
presentiment of the dangers with which the glory obtained by literary
fame threatened his repose? However that may be, it is certain that he
endured rather than sought after it; and we may be equally sure that
the glory to which his soul aspired was such as could be reaped in the
senate, the camp, or amid the difficulties of an active, virtuous life.
At sixteen he wrote:--

"For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death,
What censure, what danger, what woe would I brave!
Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath;
Their glory illumines the gloom of their grave." 1806.

We find the following in his examination of conscience, written when he
was given up to fashionable London life, and in the heyday of his poetic
fame:--

"To be the first man--not the dictator, not the Sylla, but the
Washington or the Aristides--the leader in talent and _truth_--is next
to the Divinity!" (1813.)

These lines show that he did not feel himself in the position he could
hav