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the Lord of Israel and the Lord of Liverpool-a vile antithesis of a Methodist and a Tory-talks of nothing but devotion and the ministry, and, I presume, expects that God and the government will help her to a pension.

Murray, the avaέ of publishers, the Anak of stationers, has a design upon you in the paper line. He wants you to become the staple and stipendiary editor of a

"society of men to that of her own sex," and was entirely above, or below, studying the feminine arts of pleasing. In 1802 Miss Berry called on her in Paris. "Found her in an excessively dirty cabinet— "sofa singularly so; her own dress, a loose spencer with a bare "neck" (Journal, vol. ii. p. 145). A similar experience is mentioned by Crabb Robinson (Diary, 1804). "On the 28th of January," he writes, "I first waited on Madame de Staël. I was shown into her "bedroom, for which, not knowing Parisian customs, I was un. "prepared. She was sitting, most decorously, in her bed, and 66 writing. She had her night-cap on, and her face was not made up "for the day. It was by no means a captivating spectacle; but I "had a very cordial reception, and two bright black eyes smiled "benignantly on me."

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Of her political opinions Sir John Bowring (Autobiographical Recollections, pp. 375, 376) has left a sketch. "Madame de Staël was a perfect aristocrat, and her sympathies were wholly with the "great and prosperous. She saw nothing in England but the luxury, 'stupidity, and pride of the Tory aristocracy, and the intelligence "and magnificence of the Whig aristocracy. These latter talked about "truth, and liberty and herself, and she supposed it was all as it should "be. As to the millions, the people, she never inquired into their "situation. She had a horror of the canaille, but anything of sangre "azul had a charm for her. When she was dying she said, 'Let me "die in peace; let my last moments be undisturbed.' Yet she "ordered the cards of every visitor to be brought to her. Among "them was one from the Duc de Richelieu. What!' exclaimed "she indignantly, 'What! have you sent away the Duke? Hurry! "Fly after him. Bring him back. Tell him that, though I die for "all the world, I live for him.'”

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Napoleon's hatred of her was intense. "Do not allow that jade, "Madame de Staël," he writes to Fouché, December 31, 1806 (New Letters of Napoleon I., p. 35), "to come near Paris." Again, March 15, 1807 (ibid., p. 39), “You are not to allow Madame de Staël to come within forty leagues of Paris. That wicked schemer ought to "make up her mind to behave herself at last." In a third letter, April 19, 1807 (ibid., p. 40), he speaks of her as "paying court, one "day to the great-a patriot, a democrat, the next!... a fright, "" a worthless woman (Léon Lecestre's Lettres inédites de Napoléon 1er, 2nd ed. vol. i. pp. 84, 88, 93).

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1813.] NEVER IN FRIENDSHIP BUT ONCE.

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periodical work. What say you? Will you be bound, like "Kit Smart, to write for ninety-nine years in the "Universal Visitor?" Seriously, he talks of hundreds a year, and though I hate prating of the beggarly elements -his proposal may be to your honour and profit, and, I am very sure, will be to our pleasure.

I don't know what to say about "friendship." I never was in friendship but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love. I am afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the king, when he wanted to knight him, that I am too old ;' " 2 but nevertheless, no one wishes you felicity, than

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more friends, fame, and

Yours, etc.

306.-To the Hon. Augusta Leigh.

4, Bennet Street, June 26th, 1813.

MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,-Let me know when you arrive, and when, and where, and how, you would like to see me,-any where in short but at dinner. I have put off going into y° country on purpose to waylay you. Ever yours,

BN.

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1. "Old Gardner the bookseller employed Rolt and Smart to "write a monthly miscellany called the Universal Visitor. There 66 was a formal written contract, which Allen the printer saw. . . "They were bound to write nothing else; they were to have, I "think, a third of the profits of his sixpenny pamphlet; and the contract was for ninety-nine years (Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson, ed. Birrell, vol. iii. p. 192).

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2.

"But first the Monarch, so polite,

VOL. II.

Ask'd Mister Whitbread if he'd be a Knight.
Unwilling in the list to be enroll'd,
Whitbread contemplated the Knights of Peg,
Then to his generous Sov'reign made a leg,
And said, 'He was afraid he was too old," etc.
Peter Pindar's Instructions to a Laureat.
Q

307. To the Hon. Augusta Leigh.

[June, 1813.]

MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,—And if you knew whom I had put off besides my journey-you would think me grown strangely fraternal. However I won't overwhelm you with my own praises.

Between one and two be it-I shall, in course, prefer seeing you all to myself without the incumbrance of third persons, even of your (for I won't own the relationship) fair cousin of eleven page memory,1 who, by the bye, makes one of the finest busts I have seen in the Exhibition, or out of it. Good night!

Ever yours,

BYRON.

P.S.-Your writing is grown like my Attorney's, and gave me a qualm, till I found the remedy in your signature.

308. To the Hon. Augusta Leigh.

[Sunday], June 27th, 1813.

MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,-If you like to go with me to y Lady Davy's 2 to-night, I have an invitation for you.

1. Letters, vol. i. p. 54, Lady Gertrude Howard married, in 1806, William Sloane Stanley, and died in 1870.

2. Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), the son of a wood-carver of Penzance, was apprenticed to John Borlase, a surgeon at Penzance, in whose dispensary he became a chemist. He wrote poetry as a young man, but soon abandoned the pursuit for science. Two poems on Byron by Davy, one written in 1823, the other in 1824, will be found in Dr. Davy's Memoirs of the Life of Sir H. Davy, vol. ii. pp. 168, 169. In October, 1798, he joined Dr. Beddoes at Bristol, where he superintended the laboratory at his Pneumatic Institution. His Researches, Chemical and Philosophical (1799), made him famous. At the Royal Institution in London, founded in 1799, Davy became assistant-lecturer in chemistry, and director of the chemical laboratory. There his lecture-room was crowded by some

1813.]

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY.

227 There you will see the Stael, some people whom you know, and me whom you do not know,-and you can talk to which you please, and I will watch over you as if you were unmarried and in danger of always being so. Now do as you like; but if you chuse to array yourself before or after half past ten, I will call for you. I think our being together before 3a people will be a new sensation to both.

Ever yours,
B.

of the most distinguished men and women of the day. Within the next few years his discoveries in electricity and galvanism, (1806-7) brought him European celebrity; his lectures on agricultural chemistry (1810) marked a fresh era in farming, and inaugurated the new movement of "science with practice." His famous discovery of the Safety Lamp was made in 1816. He was created a baronet in 1818. A skilful fisherman, he wrote, when in declining health, Salmonia, or Days of Fly-fishing, published in 1827. Ticknor (Life, vol. i. p. 57), speaking of Davy in 1815, says, "He is now "about thirty-three, but with all the freshness and bloom of five-and"twenty, and one of the handsomest men I have seen in England. "He has a great deal of vivacity, talks rapidly, though with great "precision, and is so much interested in conversation, that his excite"ment amounts to nervous impatience, and keeps him in constant "motion."

Davy married, in 1812, a rich widow, Jane Apreece, née Kerr (1780-1855). The marriage brought him wealth; but it also, it is said, impaired the simplicity of his character, and made him ambitious of social distinction. Miss Berry (Journal, vol. ii. p. 535) supped with Lady Davy in May, 1813, to meet the Princess of Wales, and notes that among the other guests was Byron. Lady Davy, who was so dark a brunette that Sydney Smith said she was as brown as a dry toast, was for many years a prominent figure in the society of London and Rome. It was of her that Madame de Staël said that she had "all Corinne's talents without her faults or 'extravagances.' ." Ticknor, who called on her in June, 1815, "found 'her in her parlour, working on a dress, the contents of her basket "strewed about the table, and looking more like home than anything "since I left it. She is small, with black eyes and hair, a very "pleasant face, an uncommonly sweet smile, and, when she speaks, "has much spirit and expression in her countenance. Her con"versation is agreeable, particularly in the choice and variety of "her phraseology, and has more the air of eloquence than I have ever heard before from a lady" (Life of George Ticknor, vol. i. P. 57).

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309.-To John Murray.

July 1st, 1813.

DEAR SIR,-There is an error in my dedication.1 The word "my" must be struck out-"my" admiration, etc.; it is a false construction and disagrees with the signature. I hope this will arrive in time to prevent a cancel and serve for a proof; recollect it is only the my" to be erased throughout.

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There is a critique in the Satirist,2 which I have read, -fairly written, and, though vituperative, very fair in judgment. One part belongs to you, viz., the 4s. and 6ď. charge; it is unconscionable, but you have no conscience. Yours truly,

B.

310.-To Thomas Moore.

4, Benedictine Street, St. James's, July 8, 1813.

I presume by your silence that I have blundered into something noxious in my reply to your letter, for the which I beg leave to send beforehand a sweeping apology

1. The dedication was originally printed thus: "To Samuel "Rogers, Esq., as a slight but most sincere token of my admiration "of his genius.'

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2. The Satirist for July 1, 1813 (pp. 70-88), reviews the Giaour at length. It condemns it for its fragmentary character and consequent obscurity, its carelessness and defects of style; but it also admits that the poem "abounds with proofs of genius:

"A word in conclusion. The noble lord appears to have an "aristocratical solicitude to be read only by the opulent. Four "shillings and sixpence for forty-one octavo pages of poetry! and "those pages verily happily answering to Mr. Sheridan's image of a "rivulet of text flowing through a meadow of margin. My good "Lord Byron, while you are revelling in all the sensual and intel"lectual luxury which the successful sale of Newstead Abbey has "procured for you, you little think of the privations to which you "have subjected us unfortunate Reviewers, . . . in order to enable us to purchase your lordship's expensive publication."

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