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The Life of Lord Byron,

BY HENRY LYTTON BULWER.

I.

It is now nearly fifteen years ago since, on a summer holiday's evening, I used to climb up to Harrow's old and venerable church-yard; amidst the humble monuments of which I would seek one humbler than the rest, and amidst the mournful yews of which I would seek the most mournful—(its trunk was withered, and some of its boughs were broken down) --for on that monument the pencil of Byron had traced lines religiously preserved—for under that yew-tree, if there be any truth in school-boy legend, Byron, albeit a stirring-minded stripling, would oftentimes meditatingly court a yet-unwilling Muse.

Oh! how well do I, even now, remember the kind of awful melancholy with which, in those twilight reveries, I would mantle our Poet's youth! how devotedly I looked upon, how fondly I lingered over, each little knoll and nook sacred to the romantic memory of the bard, who, himself a mystery, was then pursuing on far-distant shores that mysterious career, which excited almost as much of the marvel as of the admiration of his countrymen.

Little did I deem, at that time, that it would be my fate to share the intimacy of his nearest relatives and dearest friends-to hear of him from some whom he left, from others whom he never ceased to love; to stand, amidst strange faces and warlike garbs, on the very spot where a few weeks before he had breathed his last, as I once did-or to write his life for a foreign people, in a foreign land, as I am now doing.

Lord Byron was born in Holles Street, London, Jan. 22, 1788, and appeared at that time, however

(1) He received the name of George Byron Gordon, in consequence of a condition imposed by the will of his maternal ancestor. The late Duke of Gordon was his godfather.

Our poet's pedigree was doubly Norman; for the Gordons, though an old Scottish family, are of French extraction; and his father was sprung from those Byrons who came over with the Conqueror. In Doomsday Book the name of Ralf de Burun ranks high among the tenants of land in Notting. hamshire; and in the succeeding reigns, under the title of Lords of Horestan Castle, we find his descendants holding considerable possessions in Derbyshire, to which afterwards,

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This indeed, to do him justice, he did so effectually as, in a very short time, to leave his lady with her liberty (a boon which he cheerfully restored), and but 150l. a-year to enjoy it upon. On such an income Mrs. Byron, not able to indulge in many of the extravagances, was likely even to want some of the necessaries, of what is called genteel existence: and to this poverty of his earlier years the passion which Lord Byron subsequently testified for fashion and fine people is to be traced.

Poor Byron's first misfortune, and the one which haunted him most bitterly during after-life, was that twist of the foot at his birth, which occasioned a deformity, singularly enough the characteristic of four of the most remarkable persons of our time-Sir Walter Scott, Marshal Soult, Monsieur de Talleyrand, and the author of Childe Harold!

Our deepest feelings are generally developed by misfortunes; nor is any misfortune so likely to have a lasting influence upon the character as one the sense of which must always be recurring. To the slight deformity he was born with, Lord Byron, even at the earliest age, seems to have been moodily sensible.

in the time of Edward I., were added the lands of Rochdale in Lancashire.

Lord Byron has boasted in his verses of his ancestors having led their vassals from Europe to Palestine in the Holy Wars. The circumstance which his Lordship imagined a warrant for this glory was the existence of some figures in the old panel-work of the chambers at Newstead. But these figures seem to establish no distinct proof of the Byrons ever having fought in the Holy Land. It is certain, however, that they distinguished themselves at the siege of Calais under Edward III., and in their respective wars on the fields of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor.

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