morning, either in conversation, or in hearing Miss Pigot play upon the piano-forte, and singing over with her a certain set of songs which he admired,[59]—­among which the “Maid of Lodi,” (with the words, “My heart with love is beating,”) and “When Time who steals our years away,” were, it seems, his particular favourites.  He appears, indeed, to have, even thus early, shown a decided taste for that sort of regular routine of life,—­bringing round the same occupations at the stated periods,—­which formed so much the system of his existence during the greater part of 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  A poem relating to this occurrence, which may be found in his unpublished volume, is thus introduced:—­“As the author was discharging his pistols in a garden, two ladies, passing near the spot, were alarmed by the sound of a bullet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.