ear, unless in crowds, thy well-known voice:
Still, if the wishes of a heart untaught
To veil those feelings which perchance it ought,
If these--but let me cease the lengthen'd strain,--
Oh! if these wishes are not breathed in vain,
The guardian seraph who directs thy fate
Will leave thee glorious, as he found thee great.

It was especially at Harrow that Byron contracted those friendships
which were like cravings of his heart, and which, although partaking of
a passionate character, had nevertheless none of the instability which
is the characteristic of passion.

The death of some of his friends, and the coldness of others, caused him
the greatest grief, and broke up the illusions of youth, exchanging
them for that misanthropy discernible in some of his poems, though
contrary to his real character.

For those, on the other hand, who were spared, and remained faithful to
him, Byron preserved through life the warmest affection and the
tenderest regard; the principal feature of his nature being the
unchanging character of his sentiments.

Although he showed at an early age his disposition to a poetical turn of
mind, by the force of his feelings and by his meditative wanderings--in
Scotland among the mountains and on the sea-shore at Cheltenham;--by his
rapturous admiration of the setting sun, as well as by the delight which
he took in the legends told him by his nurses, and the emotions which he
experienced to a degree which made him lose all appetite, all rest, and
all peace of mind; yet no one would have believed at that time that a
gigantic poetical genius lay dormant in so active a nature. Soon,
however, did his soul light up his intelligence, and obliged him to have
recourse to his pen to pour out his feelings. From that moment his
genius spread its roots in his heart, and Harrow became his paradise
owing to the affection which he met with there.

It was at Harrow that he wrote, between his fourteenth and eighteenth
year, the "Hours of Idleness, by a Minor," of which he had printed at
the request of his friends, a few copies for private circulation only.
These modest poems did not, however, escape the brutal attacks of
critics. Mackenzie, however, a man of talent himself, soon discovered
that at the bottom of these poems there lay the roots of a great
poetical genius. The "Hours of Idleness" are a treasure of intellectual
and psychological gleanings. They showed man as God created him, and
before h