It was in the summer of 1798, as I have already said, that Lord Byron, then in his eleventh year, left Scotland with his mother and nurse, to take possession of the ancient seat of his ancestors.  In one of his latest letters, referring to this journey, he says, “I recollect Loch Leven as it were but yesterday—­I saw it in my way to England in 1798.”  They had already arrived at the Newstead toll-bar, and saw the woods of the Abbey stretching out to receive them, when Mrs. Byron, affecting to be ignorant of the place, asked the woman of the toll-house—­to whom that seat belonged?  She was told that the owner of it, Lord Byron, had been some months dead.  “And who is the next heir?” asked the proud and happy mother.  “They say,” answered the woman, “it is a little boy who lives at Aberdeen.”—­“And this is he, bless him!” exclaimed the nurse, no longer able to contain herself, and turning to kiss with delight the young lord who was seated on her lap.

Even under the most favourable circumstances, such an early elevation to rank would be but too likely to have a dangerous influence on the character; and the guidance under which young Byron entered upon his new station was, of all others, the least likely to lead him safely through its perils and temptations.  His mother, without judgment or self-command, alternately spoiled him by indulgence, and irritated, or—­what was still worse—­amused him by her violence.  That strong sense of the ridiculous, for which he was afterwards so remarkable, and which showed itself thus early, got the better even of his fear of her; and when Mrs. Byron, who was a short and corpulent person, and rolled considerably in her gait, would, in a rage, endeavour to catch him, for the purpose of inflicting punishment, the young urchin, proud of being able to out-strip her, notwithstanding his lameness, would run round the room, laughing like a little Puck, and mocking at all her menaces.  In a few anecdotes of his early life which he related in his “Memoranda,” though the name of his mother was never mentioned but with respect, it was not difficult to perceive that the recollections she had left behind—­at least, those that had made the deepest impression—­were of a painful nature.  One of the most striking passages, indeed, in the few pages of that Memoir which related to his early days, was where, in speaking of his own sensitiveness, on the subject of his deformed foot, he described the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him, when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him “a lame brat.”  As all that he had felt strongly through life was, in some shape or other, reproduced in his poetry, it was not likely that an expression such as this should fail of being recorded.  Accordingly we find, in the opening of his drama, “The Deformed Transformed,”

     Bertha.  Out, hunchback!
     Arnold.  I was born so, mother!

It may be questioned, indeed, whether that whole drama was not indebted for its origin to this single recollection.