seems they had quarrelled, and on his leaving her in the drawing-
room, she called after him, that he might go about his business, for
she did not care two skips of a louse for him. On coming to the
hall, finding paper and ink on the table, he wrote two lines in
answer, and sent it up to her Ladyship, to the effect that she always
spoke of what was running in her head.

Byron has borne testimony to the merits of his guardian, her son, as
a tragic poet, by characterizing his publications as paper books. It
is, however, said that they nevertheless showed some talent, and that
The Father's Revenge, one of the tragedies, was submitted to the
judgment of Dr Johnson, who did not despise it.

But to return to the progress of Byron at Harrow; it is certain that
notwithstanding the affectionate solicitude of Dr Drury to encourage
him, he never became an eminent scholar; at least, we have his own
testimony to that effect, in the fourth canto of Childe Harold; the
lines, however, in which that testimony stands recorded, are among
the weakest he ever penned.


May he who will his recollections rake
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latin echoes: I abhorr'd
Too much to conquer, for the poet's sake,
The drill'd, dull lesson forced down word by word,
In my repugnant youth with pleasure to record.


And, as an apology for the defect, he makes the following remarks in