But when George was ten this old uncle died.  Then mother and son said good-by to Aberdeen, and at length traveled southwards to take possession of their great house and broad lands.  But the heritage was not so great as at first sight would appear, for the house was so ruinous that it was scarcely fit to live in, and the wicked lord had sold some of the land.  However, as the sale was unlawful, after much trouble the land was recovered.

Byron had now to take his place among boys of his own class, and when he was thirteen he was sent to school at Harrow.  But he hated school.  He was shy as “a wild mountain colt” and somewhat snobbish, and at first was most unpopular.

As he says himself, however, he “fought his way very fairly” and he formed some friendships, passionately, as he did everything.  In spite of his lameness, he was good at sports, especially at swimming.  He was brave, and even if his snobbishness earned for him the nickname of the “Old English Baron,” his comrades admired his spirit, and in the end, instead of being unpopular, he led—­ often to mischief.  “I was,” he says, “always cricketing—­ rebelling—­fighting, rowing (from row, not boat-rowing, a different practice), and in all manner of mischiefs.”  Yet, wild though he was, of his headmaster he ever kept a kindly remembrance.  “Dr. Drury,” he says, “whom I plagued sufficiently too, was the best, the kindest friend I ever had.”

Byron hated Harrow until his last year and a half there; then he liked it.  And when he knew he must leave and go to Cambridge, he was so unhappy that he counted the days that remained, not with joy at the thought of leaving, but with sorrow.

At Cambridge he felt himself lonely and miserable at first, as he had at school.  But there too he soon made friends.  He found plenty of time for games, he rode and shot, rejoiced in feats of swimming and diving.  He wrote poetry also, which he afterwards published under the name of Hours of Idleness.  It was a good name for the book, for indeed he was so idle in his proper studies, that the wonder is that he was able to take his degree.

It was in 1807, at the age of nineteen, that Lord Byron published his Hours of Idleness, with a rather pompous preface.  The poems were not great, some of them indeed were nothing less than mawkish, but perhaps they did not deserve the slashing review which appeared in the Edinburgh Review.  The Edinburgh Review was a magazine given at this time to criticising authors very severely, and Byron had to suffer no more than other and greater poets.  But he trembled with indignation, and his anger called forth his first really good poem, called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.  It is a satire after the style of Pope, and in it Byron lashes not only his reviewers, but also other writers of his day.  His criticisms are, many of them, quite wrong, and in after years when he came to know the men he now decried, he regretted this poem, and declared it should never be printed again.  But it is still included in his works.  Perhaps having just read about Sir Walter Scott, it may amuse you to read what Byron has to say of him.