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Warm with the fond hope and learning's sacred flame,
To Granta's bowers the youthful poet came;

Unconquered powers the immortal mind displayed,
But worn with anxious thought, the frame decayed.
Pale o'er his lamp, and in his cell retired,
The martyr student faded and expired.
Oh! genius, taste, and piety sincere,

Too early lost 'midst studies too severe !

Foremost to mourn, was generous Southey seen,

He told the tale, and showed what White had been;
Nor told in vain. Far o'er the Atlantic wave

A wanderer came, and sought the poet's grave :
On yon low stone he saw his lonely name,
And raised this fond memorial to his fame.

Lord Byron has consecrated some lines of pure pathos to the memory of White, who

"View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,

And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart."

Henry Kirke White's verse is fluent and correct, plaintive and reflective, and rich in fancy and description; and he affords a fine example of youthful ardor devoted to the purest and noblest objects. His case, has, however, been referred to as an alarming instance of the danger of mental pressure, and of the injury that extreme and misdirected application of the mind may do to the body. "The picture of a Kirke White," says a popular writer, "dying at the age of 21, of nocturnal study, wet towels round heated temples, want of sleep, want of air, want of everything which Nature intended for the body, is not only melancholy because it is connected with an early death; it is melancholy also on account of the certain effect which would have followed such a course unchecked if he had lived."

Dr. Forbes Winslow, however, considers this illustration unfortunate. "Kirke White," he adds, "from his earliest infancy, was of so delicate a constitution as to be unfit (as was supposed) for any active occupation. The question may naturally arise-would so active and irritable a mind, united to so feeble a frame, have lacked opportunity under any circumstances of rapidly wearing out both itself and its earthly tenement? The wasting fever of such a mind is not to be allayed by any restrictions as to hours of study, rest, or general hygiene."* Although difference of opinion exists as to the case of Kirke White, the effect of mental labor upon bodily health, in relation to age, temperament, and other circumstances, cannot be too closely watched; and wherever there is an insatiate craving after knowledge, so as to produce an overgrowth of mind, the extreme application cannot too soon be restrained.

*Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology. New Series.-No. IX.

SIR ROBERT PEEL AT HARROW AND OXFORD.

This distinguished statesman, whose name is indissolubly associated with some of the most important events in the history of our time, was born in 1788, in a cottage adjoining Chamber Hall, his father's house, in the neighborhood of Bury, Lancashire, which happened at that time to be under repair. He descended from the ancient family of De Pele, established first in Yorkshire, and afterward in Lancashire. His grandfather commenced, and his father completed, the acquisition of a large fortune as a cotton-spinner; and, as if "to marshal him the way that he was going," Mr. Peel, the father, two years after the birth of his son Robert, entered the House of Commons as a member, and as a zealous supporter of Mr. Pitt: in 1800 he received a baronetcy.

The son was sent early to Hipperholme School, in Yorkshire, where he cut upon a block of stone (now preserved at Halifax) the following inscription:

R. PEEL.

No hostile bands can antedate my doom.

He was removed to Harrow School, and appears in the Speech Bill of 1803, as Peel, sen., Upper-Fifth Form, No. 58. Lord Byron, his school-fellow (and born in the same year), says of him:

"Peel, the orator and statesman (that was, or is, or is to be), was my form-fellow, and we were both at the top of our remove. We were on good terms, but his brother was my intimate friend. There were always great hopes of Peel amongst us all, masters and scholars-and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar, he was greatly my superior; as a declaimer and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal; as a school-boy out of school, I was always in scrapes, and he never, and in school he always knew his lesson, and I rarely, but when I knew it, I knew it nearly as well. In general information, history, eto., I think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my standing."*

He was (says his biographer, Doubleday) diligent, studious, and sagacious, if not quick, but never brilliant; preserving a high station among his school-mates by exertion and perseverance rather than genius; and being remarkable for prudent good sense rather than showy talent. His memory is fondly. cherished at Harrow, where the room which he occupied in a house in the town is kept in its original state, with a brick on which he cut his name, the genuineness of the inscription being verified by Peel's handwriting in a ciphering-book of the same date. His name is also cut in the panel of the old schoolroom, with those of his three sons, whom he placed in the school.

*For an anecdote of his friendship with Lord Byron, see page 291.
↑ Political Life of Sir Robert Peel, 1856, vol. i. p. 42.

In 1804, Peel left Harrow, and entered Christchurch, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner. At the University, he was a diligent and laborious student; and in 1808, on taking his degree, obtained a double first-class, the highest honors, both in classics and mathematics. Amongst his competitors were Mr. Gilbert, afterward Vice-Chancellor of the University; Mr. Hampden, Professor of Divinity; and Mr. Whately, the present Archbishop of Dublin.

A boy from Tunbridge School, writing to one of his former class-fellows an account of this examination, speaks with enthusiasm of the spirit of Peel's translations, especially of his beautiful rendering of the opening of the second book of Lucretius, beginning:

Suave mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis

E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;

and ending with the picture of the philosopher gazing from his calm oriental rest on the disturbed, self-wearying, ignorant, erring world. "Often of late," said one of those to whom this letter at the time was read, "have I been struck with the fitness of this passage to Peel himself, who, having achieved so much amidst all the strife of party, could, free from its entanglements, see men of all parties gathering the ripening fruit of his

measures."

Mr. Doubleday describes Peel's college acquirements as of the solid kind, and such as a laborious student of good practical sagacity may always acquire. Of wit, or imagination, or of the inventive faculty in general, Mr. Peel had little; and to such men the absence of these more specious qualifications is a negative advantage. If they are unable to dazzle others, in the same ratio they are exempted from being dazzled by them; and hence it is that persons so qualified have a clearer view of the characters of those with whom they have to deal, and are better adapted to the ordinary business of life than their more accomplished competitors."

In the course of the year 1808, Mr. Peel completed his studies at Oxford. From his very cradle, it may be said, he was destined by his father for a politician; and in 1809, being of age, he entered Parliament for the borough of Cashel.

It is not our province to record the political life of this distinguished man, which extended beyond forty years. More germane is it in this place to glance at Sir Robert Peel as a patron of English Literature and men of letters. He tendered a baronetcy to Southey, and conferred on him a pension of 300%. a-year, and gave the same amount to Wordsworth; to James Montgomery, 150l. a-year; and to Tytler, to Tennyson, and M'Culloch, each 2007. a-year; and pensions to Frances Browne, and the widow of Thomas Hood. To him Mrs. Somerville and Professor Faraday are indebted for their pensions; nor should be forgotten his friendship with Lawrence, Wilkie, and Chan

trey; his patronage of Collins, Roberts, and Stanfield; and his prompt relief of the sufferings of Haydon.*

LORD BYRON AT ABERDEEN, HARROW, AND CAMBRIDGE. This celebrated man, who, as a poet of description and passion, will always occupy a high place, was born Jan. 22, 1788, at No. 24, in Holles-street, Cavendish-square, and was christened in the small parish church of St. Marylebone. He was the only son of Captain John Byron, of the Guards, and Catherine Gordon, of Gight, an Aberdeenshire heiress. Owing to an accident attending his birth, his feet were distorted, a defect which was the source of pain and mortification to him during the whole of his life. His mother's fortune was soon squandered by her profligate husband, and she retired to the city of Aberdeen, to bring up her son on a reduced income of about 1307. per annum. When about five years old, Byron was sent to a day-school at Aberdeen, kept by one Bowers, and remained there a twelvemonth, as appears by the following entry in the day-book of the school:

"George Gordon Byron.

19th November, 792

19th November, 1793.-Paid one guinea."

Of the progress of his learning here, and at other places, we have the following record, in a sort of a journal which he once began, under the title of "My Dictionary," and which is preserved in one of his manuscript books:

"I was sent at five years old, or earlier, to a school kept by a Mr Bowers, who was called Bodsy Bowers, by reason of his dapperness. It was a school for both sexes, I learned little there except to repeat by rote the first lesson, of monosyllables ('God made man.' 'Let us love him.'), by hearing it often repeated, without acquiring a letter. Whenever proof was made of my progress at home, I repeated these words with the most rapid fluency; but on turning over a new leaf, I continued to repeat them, so that the narrow boundaries of my first year's accomp ishments were detected, my ears boxed (which they did not deserve, seeing that it was only by ear that I had acquired my letters), and my intellects consigned to a new preceptor He was a very devout, clever little clergynian, named Ross, afterward minister of one of the Kirks (East, 1 think). Under him I made astonishing progress, and I recollect to this day his mild manners and good-natured painstaking. The moment I could read, my grand passion was history; and why, I know not, but I was particularly taken with the battle near the Lake Regillus in the Roman History, put into my hands the first. Four years ago, when standing on the heights of Tusculum, and looking down upon the little round lake that was once Regillus, and which dots the immense expanse below, I remembered my young enthusiasm and my old instructor. Afterward 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 right 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 by the demise of my uncle."

In one of his Letters he says of his writing:

"I acquired this handwriting, which I can hardly read myself, under the fair copies of

* Notes and Queries, No. 132.

Mr. Duncan, of the same city: I don't think he could plume himself much upon my progress. However, I wrote much better than I have ever done since. Haste and agitation of one kiud or another, have quite spoilt as pretty a scrawl as ever scratched over a frank."

Byron's early religious habits were fostered by his nurse, who taught him to repeat several of the Psalms; the 1st and 23d being among the earliest that he committed to memory; and through the care of this respectable woman, who was herself of a very religious disposition, he attained a far earlier and more intimate acquaintance with the Sacred Writings than falls to the lot of most young people. In a letter which he wrote to Mr. Murray from Italy, in 1821, after requesting of that gentleman to send him, by the first opportunity, a Bible, he adds: "Don't forget this, for I am a great reader and admirer of those books, and had read them through and through before I was eight years old. I speak, as a boy, from the recollected impression of that period at Aberdeen in 1796.”

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It was about 1798 that Byron is said to have composed his first rhymes upon an old friend of his mother's, to whom he had taken a dislike; but he himself tells us that his "first dash into poetry was in 1800, when he "made an attempt at elegy-a very dull one.' On Byron succeeding to his uncle's title, his mother removed with him to the family seat, Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire; and Mr. Rogers, a schoolmaster of Nottingham, improved him considerably by reading passages from Virgil and Cicero with him; but, in less than a year, he was conveyed to a quiet boarding-school at Dulwich, where he remained two years under the tuition of Dr. Glennie. Within the next two years, his mother removed him to Harrow, where he remained till 1805, when he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. At Harrow, he was an irregular and turbulent scholar, though he eagerly devoured all sorts of learning except that which was prescribed for him: his talent for declamation was the only one by which he was particularly distinguished: he had no aptitude for merely verbal scholarship; and his patience. seemed to have entirely failed him in the study of Greek. He frequently gave signs of a frank, noble, and generous spirit, which endeared him to his schoolmates, of which Moore, in his Life of the poet, relates the following instance:

"While Lord Byron and Mr. Peel were at Harrow together, a tyrant some few years older, whose name was * * * *, claimed a right to fag little Peel, which claim (whether rightly or wrongly, I know not) Peel resisted. His resistance, however, was in vain : * * not only subdued him, but determined also to punish the refractory zlave, and proceeded forthwith to put his determination in practice, by inflicting a kind of bastinado on the inner fleshy side of the boy's arm, which during the operation, was twisted round with some degree of technical skill, to r nder the pain more acute. While the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor Peel was writhing under them, Byron saw and felt for the misery of his friend; and although he knew he was not strong enough to fight # * with any hope of success, and that it were dangerous even to approach

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