years been an attendant on his favourite poet. With avidity, as may be
supposed, he noted down from the lips of his patient all the
particulars she could remember of his Lordship's early days; and it is
to the communications with which this gentleman has favoured me, that
I am indebted for many of the anecdotes of that period which I have
related.

As a mark of gratitude for her attention to him, Byron had, in parting
with May Gray, presented her with his watch,--the first of which he
had ever been possessor. This watch the faithful nurse preserved
fondly through life, and, when she died, it was given by her husband
to Dr. Ewing, by whom, as a relic of genius, it is equally valued. The
affectionate boy had also presented her with a full-length miniature
of himself, which was painted by Kay of Edinburgh, in the year 1795,
and which represents him standing with a bow and arrows in his hand,
and a profusion of hair falling over his shoulders. This curious
little drawing has likewise passed into the possession of Dr. Ewing.

The same thoughtful gratitude was evinced by Byron towards the sister
of this woman, his first nurse, to whom he wrote some years after he
left Scotland, in the most cordial terms, making enquiries of her
welfare, and informing her, with much joy, that he had at last got his
foot so far restored as to be able to put on a common boot,--"an event
for which he had long anxiously wished, and which he was sure would
give her great pleasure."

In the summer of the year 1801 he accompanied his mother to
Cheltenham, and the account which he himself gives of his sensations
at that period[26] shows at what an early age those feelings that lead
to poetry had unfolded themselves in his heart. A boy, gazing with