by showing
the names of their parents written on the wall, he prevented his
comrades from setting fire to the school.

On attaining his majority, his first care was to improve the financial
condition of his mother, notwithstanding the shattered state of his
fortune, and to prepare a suitable apartment for her at Newstead.

When the cruel criticisms of the "Edinburgh Review" condemned his first
steps in the career of literature, his chief care after the first
explosion of his own sorrow, was to allay, as far as he could, the
sensitiveness of his mother, who, not having the same motive or power to
summon up a spirit of resistance, was, of course, more helplessly alive
to this attack upon his fame, and felt it far more than, after the first
burst of indignation, he did himself.

During his first travels to the East his affairs were in a very
embarrassed state. But, nevertheless, here are the terms in which he
wrote to his mother from Constantinople:--

"If you have occasion for any pecuniary supply, pray use my funds as far
as they go, without reserve; and, lest this should not be enough, in my
next to Mr. H---- I will direct him to advance any sum you may want."

There is a degree of melancholy in the letter which he wrote to his
mother on his return to England. He had received most deplorable
accounts of his affairs when at Malta, and he applied the terms apathy
and indifference to the sentiments with which he approached his native
land. He goes on to say, however, that the word apathy is not to be
applied to his mother, as he will show; that he wishes her to be the
mistress of Newstead, and to consider him only as the visitor. He brings
her presents of all kinds, etc. "That notwithstanding this alienation,"
adds Moore, "which her own unfortunate temper produced, he should have
continued to consult her wishes, and minister to her comforts with such
unfailing thoughtfulness (as is evinced not only in the frequency of his
letters, but in the almost exclusive appropriation of Newstead to her
use), redounds in no ordinary degree to his honor."

This want of affection never existed but in the minds of some of Byron's
biographers. Lord Byron knew that his mother doted upon him, and that
she watched his growing fame with feverish anxiety.

His successes were passionately looked forward to by her. She had
collected in one volume all the articles which had appeared upon his
first poems and satires, and had written her own