Byron, but by the young future Baron of Newstead himself. In the
winter of 1797, his mother having chanced, one day, to read part of a
speech spoken in the House of Commons, a friend who was present said
to the boy, "We shall have the pleasure, some time or other, of
reading your speeches in the House of Commons."--"I hope not," was his
answer: "if you read any speeches of mine, it will be in the House of
Lords."
The title, of which he thus early anticipated the enjoyment, devolved
to him but too soon. Had he been left to struggle on for ten years
longer, as plain George Byron, there can be little doubt that his
character would have been, in many respects, the better for it. In the
following year his grand-uncle, the fifth Lord Byron, died at Newstead
Abbey, having passed the latter years of his strange life in a state
of austere and almost savage seclusion. It is said, that the day after
little Byron's accession to the title, he ran up to his mother and
asked her, "whether she perceived any difference in him since he had
been made a lord, as he perceived none himself:"--a quick and natural
thought; but the child little knew what a total and talismanic change
had been wrought in all his future relations with society, by the
simple addition of that word before his name. That the event, as a
crisis in his life, affected him, even at that time, may be collected
from the agitation which he is said to have manifested on the
important morning, when his name was first called out in school with
the title of "Dominus" prefixed to it.
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