eriod that a boyish love for Margaret
Parker, his cousin, who died shortly after, led Byron into the practice
of verse.

From 1801 to 1805, from thirteen years of age to seventeen, George was
at Harrow, where he sat beside Peel, the future statesman. This period
of ardent friendship with his fellows includes also the romantic
affection, in 1803, for Miss Chaworth, heiress of Annesley, near
Newstead, who looked on her admirer as the mere schoolboy that he was.
Leaving Harrow with the reputation of an idler who would never learn,
Byron was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October, 1805. His
vacations were spent with his mother at Southwell, and her explosions of
temper, in which she would throw poker and tongs, alienated him
increasingly. In vacation and in term alike he read with extraordinary
avidity and variety, wrote a great deal of verse, and in November, 1806,
printed a small volume of poems for private circulation.

He was a frank and vivid correspondent; his letters to Miss Pigot, of
Southwell, and others, are full of the liveliest descriptions of the
Cambridge days. At this time Byron was painfully shy of new faces, and
perpetually mortified on account of his poverty. He rose, and retired to
rest, very late. He was very fond of the exercises of swimming, riding,
shooting, fencing, and sparring; greatly devoted to his dogs, delighted
in music, and was known as remarkably superstitious. Of his charity and
kindheartedness there was no end. Always conscious of his deformity, and
terribly afraid of becoming corpulent, he was sedulously careful of his
person and dress.

"Hours of Idleness," Byron's first published volume, came out while he
was at the university, and was received by the "Edinburgh Review" with a
contempt which stung him to the quick. With intervals of dissipation in
London and at Brighton, Byron threw himself, at Newstead, into the
preparation of a satirical revenge, training himself for it by a deep
study of the writings of Pope. After his coming of age, in 1809, he went
up to London with his satire, and on March 13 took his seat in the House
of Lords. A few days later "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" was the
talk of the town. Wild festivities at Newstead followed its publication,
and on July 2 Byron sailed from Falmouth in the Lisbon packet.

_II.--The Poet Finds Himself_

Lord Byron was absent from England for two years, and in the solitude of
his nights at sea and in his lone w