reason, Lord Byron."--"I have."--"What is it?"--"Why, Dr. Butler,"
replied the young peer, with proud composure, "if you should happen to
come into my neighbourhood when I was staying at Newstead, I certainly
should not ask you to dine with me, and therefore feel that I ought
not to dine with _you_."[41]

The general character which he bore among the masters at Harrow was that
of an idle boy, who would never learn anything; and, as far as regarded
his tasks in school, this reputation was, by his own avowal, not
ill-founded. It is impossible, indeed, to look through the books which
he had then in use, and which are scribbled over with clumsy interlined
translations, without being struck with the narrow extent of his
classical attainments. The most ordinary Greek words have their English
signification scrawled under them, showing too plainly that he was not
sufficiently familiarised with their meaning to trust himself without
this aid. Thus, in his Xenophon we find νεοι, _young_--σωμασιν,
_bodies_--ανθρωποις τοις αγαθοις, _good men_, &c. &c.--and even in the
volumes of Greek plays which he presented to the library on his
departure, we observe, among other instances, the common word χρυσος
provided with its English representative in the margin.

But, notwithstanding his backwardness in the mere verbal scholarship,
on which so large and precious a portion of life is wasted,[42] in all
that general and miscellaneous knowledge which is alone useful in the
world, he was making rapid and even wonderful progress. With a mind
too inquisitive and excursive to be imprisoned within statutable
limits, he flew to subjects that interested his already manly tastes,
with a zest which it is in vain to expect that the mere pedantries of
school could inspire; and the irregular, but ardent, snatches of study
which he caught in this way, gave to a mind like his an impulse