s and a brother's love. In his pure and
passionate heart friendship and love became mixed: his love partook of
the purity of friendship, and his friendships of all the ardor of love.

But to return to his fourteenth year. While expressing in verse his love
for his cousin, he expressed at the same time in poetry the strong
friendship he had conceived, even before going to Harrow, for a boy who
had been his companion.

This boy, who had a most amiable, good, and virtuous disposition, was
the son of one of his tenants at Newstead. Aristocratic prejudices ran
high in England, and this friendship of Byron for a commoner was sure to
call forth the raillery of some of his companions. Notwithstanding this,
Byron, at twelve years and a half old, replied in these terms to the
mockery of others:--

To E----.

Let Folly smile to view the names
Of thee and me in friendship twined;
Yet Virtue will have greater claims
To love, than rank with vice combined.

And though unequal is thy fate,
Since title deck'd my higher birth!
Yet envy not this gaudy state;
Thine is the pride of modest worth.

Our souls at least congenial meet,
Nor can thy lot my rank disgrace;
Our intercourse is not less sweet,
Since worth of rank supplies the place.

What noble views in a child of twelve! How well one feels that, whatever
may be his fate, such a nature will never lose its independence, nor
allow prejudice to carry it beyond the limits of honor and of justice,
and that its device will always be, "_Fais ce que dois, advienne que
pourra._" "I do what I ought, come what may."

At thirteen he wrote some lines in which he seemed to have a kind of
presentiment of the glory that awaited him, and, at any rate, in which
he displayed his resolve to deserve it:--

A FRAGMENT.

When to their airy hall, my fathers' voice
Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice;
When, poised upon the gale, my form shall ride,
Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain's side;
Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns
To mark the spot where earth to earth returns!
No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone;
My epitaph shall be my name alone:
If _that_ with honor fail to crown my clay,
Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay!
_That_, only _that_, shall single out the spot;
By that remember'd, or with that forgot.

Again, at thirteen, a visit to Newstead inspired him with the following
beautiful l