score of his Cambridge cronies, who came down, entering the mansion
between the bear and the wolf, and were received with salvos of
pistol-shots. Here they played games over the spacious grounds, wrestled,
boxed, swam, and at night feasted and drank deep damnation out of a skull
to all Scotch reviewers.

Probably the acme of this depravity was reached when the young gentlemen
began shooting the pendants off the chandelier; then the servants hastily
decamped and left the rogues to do their own cooking.

This brought them to their senses, sanity came back, and the company
disbanded. Then the servants, who had watched the orgies from afar,
returned and found a week's pile of dishes unwashed and a horse stabled in
the library.

* * * * *

Then Byron had reached the mature age of twenty-one, he was formally
admitted to the House of Lords as a Peer of the realm. His titles and
pedigree were so closely scanned on this occasion that he grew quite out
of conceit with the noble company, and was seriously thinking of launching
a dunciad in their direction. His good nature was especially ruffled by
Lord Carlisle, his guardian, who refused to stand as his legal sponsor.
The chief cause of the old Lord's prejudice against the young one lay in
the fact that the young 'un had ridiculed the old 'un's literary
pretensions.

They were rivals in letters, with a very beautiful, natural and mutual
disdain for each other.