"At Harrow," said one of Bute's obituary notices, "the young Scottish peer was as poetical as Byron." This rather absurd remark is perhaps to some extent justified by one episode in Bute's school career. "I have a general recollection of him," writes a correspondent already quoted, "as a very amiable, though reserved, boy, not given to games, who astonished us all by securing the English Prize Poem. He won this distinction (the assigned subject was 'Edward the Black Prince') in the summer of 1863, when only fifteen years of age." "His winning this prize in 1863, when quite young," writes the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in the same form as Bute at Harrow and knew him well, "was his most notable exploit. There is a special passage about ocean waves and their 'decuman,' which has often been quoted as a remarkable effort on the part of a young boy.[5] {25} He was very quiet and unassuming in all his ways." A further honour gained by Bute in the same year (1863) was one of the headmaster's Fifth Form prizes for Latin Verse; but the text of this composition (it was a translation from English verse) has not been preserved. The fact of his winning these two important prizes is a sufficient proof that, if not "as poetical as Byron," he had a distinct feeling for poetry, and that generally his industry and ability had enabled him to make up much, if not all, of the leeway caused by the imperfect and desultory character of his early education. In other words he passed through his school course with credit and even distinction; and that he preserved a kindly memory of his Harrow days is sufficiently shown by the fact that he took the unusual step--unusual, that is, in the case of the head of a great Roman Catholic family--of sending all his three sons to be educated at the famous school on the Hill. Bute's career at Harrow, like his private school course, was an unusually short one, extending over only three years. He left the school in the first term of 1865, presenting to the Vaughan Library at his departure a small collection of books, which it may be of some interest to enumerate. They were Pierotti's _Jerusalem Explained_, 2 vols. folio; {26} Digby's _Broadstone of Honour_, 3 vols.; Victor Hugo's _Les Miserables_, 3 vols.; Miss Proctor's _Legends and Lyrics_; Gil Blas, 2 vols. (illustrated); _Don Quixote_; Napier's _Memoirs of Montrose_, 3 vols.; and _Memoirs of Dundee_, 2 vols. He further evinced his interest in his old school by presenting to it, five years after leaving, a portrait of John first Marquess of Bute (then Lord Mountstuart), wearing the dress of the school Archery Corps of that day (1759). This portrait (which is a copy of a well-known painting by Allan Ramsay) now hangs in the Vaughan Library. [Sidenote: 1865, Pilgrimage to Palestine]