[39] These stanzas, I have since found, are not Lord Byron's, but the production of Lady Tuite, and are contained in a volume published by her Ladyship in the year 1795.—(Second edition.)
[40] Gibbon, in speaking of public schools, says—"The mimic scene of a rebellion has displayed, in their true colours, the ministers and patriots of the rising generation." Such prognostics, however, are not always to be relied on;—the mild, peaceful Addison was, when at school, the successful leader of a barring-out.
[41] This anecdote, which I have given on the testimony of one of Lord Byron's schoolfellows, Doctor Butler himself assures me has but very little foundation in fact.—(Second Edition.)
[42] "It is deplorable to consider the loss which children make of their time at most schools, employing, or rather casting away, six or seven years in the learning of words only, and that very imperfectly."—Cowley, Essays.
"Would not a Chinese, who took notice of our way of breeding, be apt to imagine that all our young gentlemen were designed to be teachers and professors of the dead languages of foreign countries, and not to be men of business in their own?"—Locke on Education.
[43] "A finished scholar may emerge from the head of Westminster or Eton in total ignorance of the business and conversation of English gentlemen in the latter end of the eighteenth century."—Gibbon.
[44] "Byron, Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex, Alumnus Scholæ; Lyonensis primus in anno Domini 1801, Ellison Duce."
"Monitors, 1801.—Ellison, Royston, Hunxman, Rashleigh, Rokeby, Leigh."
[45] "Drury's Pupils, 1804.—Byron, Drury, Sinclair, Hoare, Bolder, Annesley, Calvert, Strong, Acland, Gordon, Drummond."
[46] During one of the Harrow vacations, he passed some time in the house of the Abbé de Roufigny, in Took's-court, for the purpose of studying the French language; but he was, according to the Abbé's account, very little given to study, and spent most of his time in boxing, fencing, &c. to the no small disturbance of the reverend teacher and his establishment.