sts
of Mrs. Byron, the collision, it may be supposed, was not a little
formidable; and the age at which the young poet was now arrived;
when--as most parents feel--the impatience of youth begins to champ
the bit, would but render the occasions for such shocks more frequent.
It is told, as a curious proof of their opinion of each other's
violence, that, after parting one evening in a tempest of this kind,
they were known each to go privately that night to the apothecary's,
enquiring anxiously whether the other had been to purchase poison,
and cautioning the vender of drugs not to attend to such an
application, if made.

It was but rarely, however, that the young lord allowed himself to be
provoked into more than a passive share in these scenes. To the
boisterousness of his mother he would oppose a civil and, no doubt,
provoking silence,--bowing to her but the more profoundly the higher
her voice rose in the scale. In general, however, when he perceived
that a storm was at hand, in flight lay his only safe resource. To
this summary expedient he was driven at the period of which we are
speaking; but not till after a scene had taken place between him and
Mrs. Byron, in which the violence of her temper had proceeded to
lengths, that, however outrageous they may be deemed, were not, it
appears, unusual with her. The poet, Young, in describing a temper of
this sort, says--

"The cups and saucers, in a whirlwind sent,
Just intimate the lady's discontent."

But poker and tongs were, it seems, the missiles which Mrs. Byron
preferred, and which she, more than once, sent resounding after her
fugitive son. In the present instance, he was but just in time to
avoid a blow aimed at him with the former of these weapons, and to
make a hasty escape to the house of a friend in the neighbourhood;
where, concerting the best means of baffling pursuit, he decided upon
an instant flight to London. The letters, which I am about to give,
were written, immediately on his arrival in town, to some friends at
Southwell, from whose kind interference in his behalf, it may fairly
be concluded that the blame of the quarrel, whatever it may have been,
did not rest with him. The first is to Mr. Pigot, a young gentleman
about the same age as himself, who had just returned, for the
vacation, from Edinburgh, where he was, at that time, pursuing his
medical studies.

LETTER 2.

TO MR. PIGOT.

"16. Piccadilly, August 9. 1806.

"My dear P