Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I | Page 8

classes, taught by four masters, the chief teaching the
fourth and fifth himself. As in England, the fifth, sixth forms, and
monitors, are heard by the head masters."
Of his class-fellows at the grammar-school there are many, of course,
still alive, by whom he is well remembered;[14] and the general
impression they retain of him is, that he was a lively, warm-hearted,
and high-spirited boy--passionate and resentful, but affectionate and
companionable with his schoolfellows--to a remarkable degree
venturous and fearless, and (as one of them significantly expressed it)
"always more ready to give a blow than take one." Among many
anecdotes illustrative of this spirit, it is related that once, in returning
home from school, he fell in with a boy who had on some former
occasion insulted him, but had then got off unpunished--little Byron,
however, at the time, promising to "pay him off" whenever they should
meet again. Accordingly, on this second encounter, though there were
some other boys to take his opponent's part, he succeeded in inflicting
upon him a hearty beating. On his return home, breathless, the servant
enquired what he had been about, and was answered by him with a
mixture of rage and humour, that he had been paying a debt, by beating
a boy according to promise; for that he was a Byron, and would never
belie his motto, "Trust Byron."
He was, indeed, much more anxious to distinguish himself among his
school-fellows by prowess in all sports[15] and exercises, than by
advancement in learning. Though quick, when he could be persuaded to
attend, or had any study that pleased him, he was in general very low in
the class, nor seemed ambitious of being promoted any higher. It is the
custom, it seems, in this seminary, to invert, now and then, the order of
the class, so as to make the highest and lowest boys change
places,--with a view, no doubt, of piquing the ambition of both. On
these occasions, and only these, Byron was sometimes at the head, and

the master, to banter him, would say, "Now, George, man, let me see
how soon you'll be at the foot again."[16]
During this period, his mother and he made, occasionally, visits among
their friends, passing some time at Fetteresso, the seat of his godfather,
Colonel Duff, (where the child's delight with a humorous old butler,
named Ernest Fidler, is still remembered,) and also at Banff, where
some near connections of Mrs. Byron resided.
In the summer of the year 1796, after an attack of scarlet-fever, he was
removed by his mother for change of air into the Highlands; and it was
either at this time, or in the following year, that they took up their
residence at a farm-house in the neighbourhood of Ballater, a favourite
summer resort for health and gaiety, about forty miles up the Dee from
Aberdeen. Though this house, where they still show with much pride
the bed in which young Byron slept, has become naturally a place of
pilgrimage for the worshippers of genius, neither its own appearance,
nor that of the small bleak valley, in which it stands, is at all worthy of
being associated with the memory of a poet. Within a short distance of
it, however, all those features of wildness and beauty, which mark the
course of the Dee through the Highlands, may be commanded. Here the
dark summit of Lachin-y-gair stood towering before the eyes of the
future bard; and the verses in which, not many years afterwards, he
commemorated this sublime object, show that, young as he was, at the
time, its "frowning glories" were not unnoticed by him.[17]
Ah, there my young footsteps in infancy wandered, My cap was the
bonnet, my cloak was the plaid; On chieftains long perish'd my
memory ponder'd As daily I strode through the pine-cover'd glade. I
sought not my home till the day's dying glory Gave place to the rays of
the bright polar-star; For Fancy was cheer'd by traditional story,
Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch-na-gar.
To the wildness and grandeur of the scenes, among which his
childhood was passed, it is not unusual to trace the first awakening of
his poetic talent. But it may be questioned whether this faculty was
ever so produced. That the charm of scenery, which derives its chief
power from fancy and association, should be much felt at an age when

fancy is yet hardly awake, and associations but few, can with difficulty,
even making every allowance for the prematurity of genius, be
conceived. The light which the poet sees around the forms of nature is
not so much in the objects themselves as in the eye that contemplates
them; and Imagination must first be able to lend a glory to such scenes,
before she can derive inspiration