letter, that you are very much piqued with most of your friends; and,
if I am not much mistaken, you are a little piqued with me. In one
part you say, 'There is little or no doubt a few years, or months,
will render us as politely indifferent to each other as if we had
never passed a portion of our time together.' Indeed, Byron, you wrong
me, and I have no doubt--at least, I hope--you wrong yourself."

As that propensity to self-delineation, which so strongly pervades his
maturer works is, to the full, as predominant in his early
productions, there needs no better record of his mode of life, as a
school-boy, than what these fondly circumstantial effusions supply.
Thus the sports he delighted and excelled in are enumerated:--

"Yet when confinement's lingering hour was done,
Our sports, our studies, and our souls were one:
Together we impell'd the flying ball,

* * * * *

Together join'd in cricket's manly toil,
Or shared the produce of the river's spoil;
Or, plunging from the green, declining shore,
Our pliant limbs the buoyant waters bore;
In every element, unchanged, the same,
All, all that brothers should be, but the name."

The danger which he incurred in a fight with some of the neighbouring
farmers--an event well remembered by some of his school-fellows--is
thus commemorated.--