Lord Byron went to Greece, he gave me orders to advance money to Madame G——­; but that lady would never consent to receive any.  His Lordship had also told me that he meant to leave his will in my hands, and that there would be a bequest in it of 10,000_l._ to Madame G——.  He mentioned this circumstance also to Lord Blessington.  When the melancholy news of his death reached me, I took for granted that this will would be found among the sealed papers he had left with me; but there was no such instrument.  I immediately then wrote to Madame G——­, enquiring if she knew any thing concerning it, and mentioning, at the same time, what his Lordship had said as to the legacy.  To this the lady replied, that he had frequently spoken to her on the same subject, but that she had always cut the conversation short, as it was a topic she by no means liked to hear him speak upon.  In addition, she expressed a wish that no such will as I had mentioned would be found; as her circumstances were already sufficiently independent, and the world might put a wrong construction on her attachment, should it appear that her fortunes were, in any degree, bettered by it.”

NOTICES

OF THE

Life of lord Byron.

It has been said of Lord Byron, “that he was prouder of being a descendant of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the Conqueror into England, than of having been the author of Childe Harold and Manfred.”  This remark is not altogether unfounded in truth.  In the character of the noble poet, the pride of ancestry was undoubtedly one of the most decided features; and, as far as antiquity alone gives lustre to descent, he had every reason to boast of the claims of his race.  In Doomsday-book, the name of Ralph de Burun ranks high among the tenants of land in Nottinghamshire; and in the succeeding reigns, under the title of Lords of Horestan Castle,[6] we find his descendants holding considerable possessions in Derbyshire; to which, afterwards, in the time of Edward I., were added the lands of Rochdale in Lancashire.  So extensive, indeed, in those early times, was the landed wealth of the family, that the partition of their property, in Nottinghamshire alone, has been sufficient to establish some of the first families of the county.

Its antiquity, however, was not the only distinction by which the name of Byron came recommended to its inheritor; those personal merits and accomplishments, which form the best ornament of a genealogy, seem to have been displayed in no ordinary degree by some of his ancestors.  In one of his own early poems, alluding to the achievements of his race, he commemorates, with much satisfaction, those “mail-covered barons” among them,

                             who proudly to battle
    Led their vassals from Europe to Palestine’s plain.

Adding,

Near Askalon’s towers John of Horiston slumbers,
Unnerved is the hand of his minstrel by death.