insomuch that, when the intelligence of his death arrived, her grief
was loud and vehement. She was indeed a woman of quick feelings and
strong passions; and probably it was by the strength and sincerity of
her sensibility that she retained so long the affection of her son,
towards whom it cannot be doubted that her love was unaffected. In
the midst of the neglect and penury to which she was herself
subjected, she bestowed upon him all the care, the love and
watchfulness of the tenderest mother.

In his fifth year, on the 19th of November, 1792, she sent him to a
day-school, where she paid about five shillings a quarter, the common
rate of the respectable day-schools at that time in Scotland. It was
kept by a Mr Bowers, whom Byron has described as a dapper, spruce
person, with whom he made no progress. How long he remained with Mr
Bowers is not mentioned, but by the day-book of the school it was at
least twelve months; for on the 19th of November of the following
year there is an entry of a guinea having been paid for him.

From this school he was removed and placed with a Mr Ross, one of the
ministers of the city churches, and to whom he formed some
attachment, as he speaks of him with kindness, and describes him as a
devout, clever little man of mild manners, good-natured, and
painstaking. His third instructor was a serious, saturnine, kind
young man, named Paterson, the son of a shoemaker, but a good scholar
and a rigid Presbyterian. It is somewhat curious in the record which
Byron has made of his early years to observe the constant endeavour
with which he, the descendant of such a limitless pedigree and great
ancestors, attempts to magnify the condition of his mother's
circumstances.