warrant his declaration 'that she jilted him:' especially as she was, at the time of their first acquaintance, engaged to Mr. Musters, whom she subsequently married. There is no doubt, however, that his affection for the lady (who is now dead) was sincere, and that the loss of her had an embittering influence upon his future life. A person, who was present when Miss Chaworth's marriage was first announced to him, has thus described the scene that occurred:—'Byron, I have some news for you,' said his mother. 'Well, what is it?' 'Take out our handkerchief first, you will want it.' 'Nonsense!' 'Take out your handkerchief, I say.' He did so, to humor her. 'Miss Chaworth is married.' An expression very peculiar, impossible to describe, passed over his pale face, and he hurried his handkerchief into his pocket; saying with an affected air of coldness and nonchalance, 'Is that all?' 'Why, I expected,' said his mother, 'you would have been plunged into grief.' He made no reply, and soon began to talk about something else.
This took place in 1805, the year of his leaving Harrow, which he quitted with the character of a plain-spoken, clever and undaunted, but idle boy. His master, Dr. Drury, for whom he always entertained respect and affection, spoke of him as one who 'might be led by a silken string to a point, rather than by a cable;' and being asked his opinion of his pupil, after some continuance at Harrow, by lord Carlisle, he replied, that 'he had talents which would add lustre to his rank.' Though generally, however, reputed to be too indolent to excel in school, it seems that he collected a vast fund of information, which was little suspected by those who saw him only when idle, in mischief, or at play. 'The truth is,' he says, 'that I read eating, read in bed, read when no one else read, and had read all sorts of reading since I was five years old, though I never met with a review till I was in my nineteenth year.' He was not, at first, liked by his schoolfellows; but with some of them he ultimately formed friendships, to which he always reverted with a melancholy delight, broken, as most of them were, by his own waywardness, or the peculiar circumstances which attended his subsequent career.
His intrepidity was shown in several pugilistic combats, many of which he undertook in the defense and protection of other boys. One of his schoolfellows says, that he has seen him fight by the hour like a Trojan, and stand up, against the disadvantages of his lameness, with all the spirit of an ancient combatant. On the same person's reminding him of his battle with Pitt, he replied, 'You are mistaken, I think; it must have been with Rice-pudding Morgan, or Lord Jocelyn, or one of the Douglases, or George Raynsford, or Pryce (with whom I had two conflicts), or with Moses Moore (the clod), or with somebody else, and not with Pitt; for with all the above-named, and other worthies of the fist, had I an interchange of black eyes and bloody noses, at various and sundry periods. However, it may have happened, for all that.' He also told Captain Medwin, in allusion to two of his actions at Harrow, that he fought Lord Calthorpe for writing 'D—d atheist' under his name; and prevented the school-room from being burnt, during a rebellion, by pointing out to the boys the names of their fathers and grandfathers on the walls.
In 1805, he was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge, which he describes as 'a new and heavy-hearted scene to him;' adding, it was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of his life, to feel that he was no
