leaving he presented her with his first watch, and a miniature by Kay of
Edinburgh, representing him with a bow and arrow in his hand and a
profusion of hair over his shoulders. He continued to correspond with her
at intervals. Byron was always beloved by his servants. This nurse
afterwards married well, and during her last illness, in 1827,
communicated to her attendant, Dr. Ewing of Aberdeen, recollections of the
poet, from which his biographers have drawn.

In the summer of 1799 he was sent to London, entrusted to the medical care
of Dr. Baillie (brother of Joanna, the dramatist), and placed in a
boarding school at Dulwich, under the charge of Dr. Glennie. The physician
advised a moderation in athletic sports, which the patient in his hours of
liberty was constantly apt to exceed. The teacher--who continued to
cherish an affectionate remembrance of his pupil, even when he was told,
on a visit to Geneva in 1817, that, he ought to have "made a better boy of
him"--testifies to the alacrity with which he entered on his tasks, his
playful good-humour with his comrades, his reading in history beyond his
age, and his intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures. "In my study," he
states, "he found many books open to him; among others, a set of our poets
from Chaucer to Churchill, which I am almost tempted to say he had more
than once perused from beginning to end." One of the books referred to was
the _Narrative of the Shipwreck of the "Juno,"_ which contains, almost
word for word, the account of the "two fathers," in _Don Juan_. Meanwhile
Mrs. Byron,--whose reduced income had been opportunely augmented by a
grant of a 300_l_. annuity from the Civil List,--after revisiting Newstead
followed her son to London, and took up her residence in a house in
Sloane-terrace. She was in the habit of having him with her there from
Saturday to Monday, kept him from school for weeks, introduced him to idle
company, and in other ways was continually hampering his progress.