r to him
in intelligence. Up to this, then, we can discover no symptom in him of
that _fatal_ kind of melancholy--that which is _hereditary_ and
_causeless_. But anon, his heart begins to beat high, and the boy
already courts aspirations, ardent desires, illusions that may well be
destined to agitate, afflict, or even overwhelm him. Meanwhile let us
follow him from Harrow to the vacations passed at Nottingham and
Southwell. There we shall see him acting plays with enthusiasm, making
himself the life of the social circle assembled round the amiable Pigott
family, delighting in music, and writing his first effusions in verse.
Certainly it was not melancholy that predominated in his early poems,
but rather generosity, kindness, sincerity, the ardor of a loving heart,
the aspiration after all that is passionate, noble, great, virtuous and
heroic; but these verses also make us feel by a thousand delicate shades
of sentiment portrayed, and by cherished illusions pertinaciously held,
that melancholy may hereafter succeed in making new passage for itself,
and finding out the path to that loving, passionate heart. And, in
truth, it did more than once penetrate there. For death snatched from
him, first, two dear companions of his childhood, and then the young
cousin, who beneath an angel's guise on earth, first awakened the fire
of love. And afterward Lord Byron gave his heart, of fifteen, to another
affection, was deceived, met with no return,[162] but, on the contrary,
was sorely wounded. Yet all the melancholy thus engendered was
accidental and factitious, springing from the excessive sensibility of
his physical and moral being, as well as from circumstances; his griefs
resembled the usual griefs of youth. It was in these dispositions that
he quitted Harrow for Cambridge University. There, one of the greatest
sorrows of his life overtook him. It was a complex sentiment, made up of
regret at having left his beloved Harrow, of grief at the recent loss of
a cherished affection, and, lastly, sadness caused by a very modest and
very singular feeling for a youth of his age; he regretted no longer
feeling himself a child, which regret can only be explained by a
presentiment of therefore soon being called on to renounce other
illusions. This is how he spoke of it still, when at Ravenna, in 1821:--

"It was one of the most fatal and crushing sentiments of my life, to
feel that I was no longer a child."

He fell ill from it. But all th