One of these fancies, as related by the miller at the head of the lake, was, to get into a boat, with his two noble Newfoundland dogs, row into the middle of the lake, then dropping the oars, tumble into the water. The faithful animals would immediately follow, seize him by the collar, one on each side, and bear him to land. This miller told me that every month he came to be weighed, and if he found himself lighter he appeared highly delighted; but if heavier, he went away in obvious ill humour, and without saying a word. At this time even, _i. e._ before he came of age, he had the greatest horror of corpulency, to which he deemed himself hereditarily prone, and used to lie a certain time every day in a hot-bed, made on purpose, to reduce himself. The master-builder, who had been engaged in the restoration of the abbey, said much about a certain _Kaled_, who then was with him,--probably the same that accompanied him to Brighton, as his younger brother,--and of the wild life kept up, and mad pranks played off, by him and his companions. He described the mornings passing in the most profound quiet, for his lordship and his guests did not rise till about one o’clock; in the afternoon, the place was all alive with them;--they were seen careering in all directions; at midnight, the old abbey was all lit up, and resounded with their jollity. On one occasion they were called up to extricate an unfortunate wight from the old stone coffin, where, in some of their mad pranks, he had secreted himself, and fitted it so well, that it was with difficulty he was drawn out, amid the merriment of his comrades. No person, indeed, could form any correct notion of Byron from his poetry, till the publication of his Don Juan, which exhibits more of the style of his youthful conversational manner than any other of his writings, except his journal. I have heard a lady who used to see him at Mrs. Byron’s, at Nottingham, say that he was then, in his teens, a most rackety fellow; was very fond of going into the kitchen, and baking oatmeal cakes on the fireshovel; on which occasions, the cook would sometimes pin a napkin to his coat, which being discovered on his return to the parlour, he would rush out and pursue the maids in all directions, and, to use the lady’s phrase, turn the house upside down. When they went away, he always took care to ask the servants if his mother had given them any thing; and on their replying in the negative, he would say, “No, no! I knew that well enough;” when he would make them a handsome present.