Regarding the masters and professors of Cambridge, Byron has little to say.  His own tutor, Tavell, appears pleasantly enough in his verse, and he commends the head of his college, Dr. Lort Mansel, for dignified demeanour in his office, and a past reputation for convivial wit.  His attentions to Professor Hailstones at Harrowgate were graciously offered and received; but in a letter to Murray he gives a graphically abusive account of Porson, “hiccuping Greek like a Helot” in his cups.  The poet was first introduced at Cambridge to a brilliant circle of contemporaries, whose talents or attainments soon made them more or less conspicuous, and most of whom are interesting on their own account as well as from their connection with the subsequent phases of his career.  By common consent Charles Skinner Matthews, son of the member for Herefordshire, 1802-6, was the most remarkable of the group.  Distinguished alike for scholarship, physical and mental courage, subtlety of thought, humour of fancy, and fascinations of character, this young man seems to have made an impression on the undergraduates of his own, similar to that left by Charles Austin on those of a later generation.  The loss of this friend Byron always regarded as an incalculable calamity.  In a note to Childe Harold he writes, “I should have ventured on a verse to the memory of Matthews, were he not too much above all praise of mine.  His powers of mind shown in the attainment of greater honours against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends, who loved him too well to envy his superiority.”  He was drowned when bathing alone among the reeds of the Cam, in the summer of 1811.

In a letter written from Ravenna in 1820, Byron, in answer to a request for contributions to a proposed memoir, introduces into his notes much autobiographical matter.  In reference to a joint visit to Newstead, he writes:  “Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together, talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic.  When we got to Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to some other subject, at which he was indignant.  ‘Come,’ said he, ’don’t let us break through; let us go on as we began, to our journey’s end;’ and so he continued, and was as entertaining as ever to the very end.  He had previously occupied, during my year’s absence from Cambridge, my rooms in Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones (his tutor), in his odd way had said, in putting him in, ’Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your attention not to damage any of the movables, for Lord Byron, sir, is a young man of tumultuous passions.’  Matthews was delighted with this, and whenever anybody came, to visit him, begged them to handle the very door with caution, and used to repeat Jones’s admonition in his tone and