his residence abroad.

Those exercises, to which he flew for distraction in less happy days,
formed his enjoyment now; and between swimming, sparring, firing at a
mark, and riding,[60] the greater part of his time was passed. In the
last of these accomplishments he was by no means very expert. As an
instance of his little knowledge of horses, it is told, that, seeing a
pair one day pass his window, he exclaimed, "What beautiful horses! I
should like to buy them."--"Why, they are your own, my Lord," said his
servant. Those who knew him, indeed, at that period, were rather
surprised, in after-life, to hear so much of his riding;--and the
truth is, I am inclined to think, that he was at no time a very adroit
horse-man.

In swimming and diving we have already seen, by his own accounts, he
excelled; and a lady in Southwell, among other precious relics of him,
possesses a thimble which he borrowed of her one morning, when on his
way to bathe in the Greet, and which, as was testified by her brother,
who accompanied him, he brought up three times successively from the
bottom of the river. His practice of firing at a mark was the
occasion, once, of some alarm to a very beautiful young person, Miss
H.,--one of that numerous list of fair ones by whom his imagination
was dazzled while at Southwell. A poem relating to this occurrence,
which may be found in his unpublished volume, is thus introduced:--"As
the author was discharging his pistols in a garden, two ladies,
passing near the spot, were alarmed by the sound of a bullet hissing
near them, to one of whom the following stanzas were addressed the
next morning."

Such a passion, indeed, had he for arms of every description, that
there generally lay a small sword by the side of his bed, with which
he used to amuse himself, as he lay awake in the morning, by thrusting
it through his bed-hangings. The person who purchased this bed at the
sale of Mrs. Byron's furniture, on her removal to Newstead, gave
out--with the view of attaching a stronger interest to the holes in
the curtains--that they were pierced by the same sword with which the
old lord had killed Mr. Chaworth, and which his descendant always kept
as a memorial by his bedside. Such is the ready process by which
fiction is often engrafted upon fact;--the sword in question being a
most innocent and bloodless weapon, which Lord Byron, during his
visits at Southwell, used to borrow of one of his neighbours.

His fondness