the society of his chosen comrades. Byron, if not one of the safest, was
one of the warmest of friends; and he plucked the more eagerly at the
choicest fruit of English public school and college life, from the feeling
he so pathetically expresses,--

Is there no cause beyond the common claim,
Endear'd to all in childhood's very name?
Ah, sure some stronger impulse vibrates here,
Which whispers Friendship will be doubly dear
To one who thus for kindred hearts must roam,
And seek abroad the love denied at home.
Those hearts, dear Ida, have I found in thee--
A home, a world, a paradise to me.

Of his Harrow intimates, the most prominent were the Duke of Dorset, the
poet's favoured fag; Lord Clare (the Lycus of the _Childish
Recollections_); Lord Delawarr (the Euryalus); John Wingfield (Alonzo),
who died at Coimbra, 1811; Cecil Tattersall (Davus); Edward Noel Long
(Cleon); Wildman, afterwards proprietor of Newstead; and Sir Robert Peel.
Of the last, his form-fellow and most famous of his mates, the story is
told of his being unmercifully beaten for offering resistance to his fag
master, and Byron rushing up to intercede with an offer to take half the
blows. Peel was an exact contemporary, having been born in the same year,
1788. It has been remarked that most of the poet's associates were his
juniors, and, less fairly, that he liked to regard them as his satellites.
But even at Dulwich his ostentation of rank had provoked for him the
nickname of "the old English baron." To Wildman, who, as a senior, had a
right of inflicting chastisement for offences, he said, "I find you have
got Delawarr on your list; pray don't lick him." "Why not?" was the reply.
"Why, I don't know, except that he is a brother peer." Again, he