"I will, some day or
other," he used to say, when a boy, "raise a troop,--the men of which
shall be dressed in black, and ride on black horses. They shall be
called 'Byron's Blacks,' and you will hear of their performing
prodigies of valour."
I have already adverted to the exceeding eagerness with which, while
at Harrow, he devoured all sorts of learning,--excepting only that
which, by the regimen of the school, was prescribed for him. The same
rapid and multifarious course of study he pursued during the holidays;
and, in order to deduct as little as possible from his hours of
exercise, he had given himself the habit, while at home, of reading
all dinner-time.[62] In a mind so versatile as his, every novelty,
whether serious or light, whether lofty or ludicrous, found a welcome
and an echo; and I can easily conceive the glee--as a friend of his
once described it to me--with which he brought to her, one evening, a
copy of Mother Goose's Tales, which he had bought from a hawker that
morning, and read, for the first time, while he dined.
I shall now give, from a memorandum-book begun by him this year, the
account, as I find it hastily and promiscuously scribbled out, of all
the books in various departments of knowledge, which he had already
perused at a period of life when few of his school-fellows had yet
travelled beyond their _longs_ and _shorts_. The list is,
unquestionably, a remarkable one;--and when we recollect that the
reader of all these volumes was, at the same time, the possessor of a
most retentive memory, it may be doubted whether, among what are
called the regularly educated, the contenders for scholastic honours
and prizes, there could be found a single one who, at the same age,
has possessed any thing like the same stock of useful knowledge.
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