lake that was once Regillus, and which dots the immense expanse below, I remembered my young enthusiasm and my old instructor.  Afterwards I had a very serious, saturnine, but kind young man, named Paterson, for a tutor.  He was the son of my shoemaker, but a good scholar, as is common with the Scotch.  He was a rigid Presbyterian also.  With him I began Latin in ‘Ruddiman’s Grammar,’ and continued till I went to the ’Grammar School, (Scotice, ’Schule; Aberdonice, ‘Squeel,’) where I threaded all the classes to the fourth, when I was recalled to England (where I had been hatched) by the demise of my uncle.  I acquired this handwriting, which I can hardly read myself, under the fair copies of Mr. Duncan of the same city:  I don’t think he would plume himself much upon my progress.  However, I wrote much better then than I have ever done since.  Haste and agitation of one kind or another have quite spoilt as pretty a scrawl as ever scratched over a frank.  The grammar-school might consist of a hundred and fifty of all ages under age.  It was divided into five classes, taught by four masters, the chief teaching the fourth and fifth himself.  As in England, the fifth, sixth forms, and monitors, are heard by the head masters.”

Of his class-fellows at the grammar-school there are many, of course, still alive, by whom he is well remembered;[14] and the general impression they retain of him is, that he was a lively, warm-hearted, and high-spirited boy—­passionate and resentful, but affectionate and companionable with his schoolfellows—­to a remarkable degree venturous and fearless, and (as one of them significantly expressed it) “always more ready to give a blow than take one.”  Among many anecdotes illustrative of this spirit, it is related that once, in returning home from school, he fell in with a boy who had on some former occasion insulted him, but had then got off unpunished—­little Byron, however, at the time, promising to “pay him off” whenever they should meet again.  Accordingly, on this second encounter, though there were some other boys to take his opponent’s part, he succeeded in inflicting upon him a hearty beating.  On his return home, breathless, the servant enquired what he had been about, and was answered by him with a mixture of rage and humour, that he had been paying a debt, by beating a boy according to promise; for that he was a Byron, and would never belie his motto, “Trust Byron.”

He was, indeed, much more anxious to distinguish himself among his school-fellows by prowess in all sports[15] and exercises, than by advancement in learning.  Though quick, when he could be persuaded to attend, or had any study that pleased him, he was in general very low in the class, nor seemed ambitious of being promoted any higher.  It is the custom, it seems, in this seminary, to invert, now and then, the order of the class, so as to make the highest and lowest boys change places,—­with a view, no doubt, of piquing the ambition of both.  On these occasions, and only these, Byron was sometimes at the head, and the master, to banter him, would say, “Now, George, man, let me see how soon you’ll be at the foot again."[16]