quack, unwilling to own his ignorance,
answered confidently, "Italian,"--to the infinite delight, as it may
be supposed, of the little satirist in embryo, who burst into a loud,
triumphant laugh at the success of the trap which he had thus laid for
imposture.

With that mindfulness towards all who had been about him in his youth,
which was so distinguishing a trait in his character, he, many years
after, when in the neighbourhood of Nottingham, sent a message, full
of kindness, to his old instructor, and bid the bearer of it tell him,
that, beginning from a certain line in Virgil which he mentioned, he
could recite twenty verses on, which he well remembered having read
with this gentleman, when suffering all the time the most dreadful
pain.

It was about this period, according to his nurse, May Gray, that the
first symptom of any tendency towards rhyming showed itself in him;
and the occasion which she represented as having given rise to this
childish effort was as follows:--An elderly lady, who was in the habit
of visiting his mother, had made use of some expression that very much
affronted him; and these slights, his nurse said, he generally
resented violently and implacably. The old lady had some curious
notions respecting the soul, which, she imagined, took its flight to
the moon after death, as a preliminary essay before it proceeded
further. One day, after a repetition, it is supposed, of her original
insult to the boy, he appeared before his nurse in a violent rage.
"Well, my little hero," she asked, "what's the matter with you now?"
Upon which the child answered, that "this old woman had put him in a
most terrible passion--that he could not bear the sight of her," &c.
&c.--and then broke out into the following doggerel, which he repeated
over and over, as if delighted with the vent he had found for his
rage:--

In Nottingham county there lives at Swan Green,
As curst an old lady as ever was seen;
And when she does die, which I hope will be soon,
She firmly believes she will go to the moon.

It is possible that these rhymes may have been caught up at
second-hand; and he himself, as will presently be seen, dated his
"first dash into poetry," as he calls it, a year later:--but the
anecdote altogether, as containing some early dawnings of character,
appeared to me worth preserving.

The small income of Mrs. Byron received at this time the
addition--most seasonable, no doubt, though on what gr