The infant rapture still survived the boy,
And Lach-na-gair with Ida look'd o'er Troy,
Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount,
And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount.

The poet, owing to his physical defect, was not a great climber, and we
are informed, on the authority of his nurse, that he never even scaled the
easily attainable summit of the "steep frowning" hill of which he has made
such effective use. But the impression of it from a distance was none the
less genuine. In the midst of a generous address, in _Don Juan_, to
Jeffrey, he again refers to the same associations with the country of his
early training:--

But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
A whole one; and my heart flies to my head
As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all--
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams,
The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall--
All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring...

Byron's allusions to Scotland are variable and inconsistent. His satire on
her reviewers was sharpened by the show of national as well as personal
antipathy; and when, about the time of its production, a young lady
remarked that he had a little of the northern manner of speech, he burst
out "Good God! I hope not. I would rather the whole d----d country was
sunk in the sea. I the Scotch accent!" But, in the passage from which we
have quoted, the swirl of feeling on the other side continues,--