1811.]

CHARLES SKINNER MATTHEWS.

29

I am very sensible of your good wishes, and, indeed, I have need of them. My whole life has been at variance with propriety, not to say decency; my circumstances are become involved; my friends are dead or estranged, and my existence a dreary void. In Matthews I have lost my "guide, philosopher, and friend;" in Wingfield a friend only, but one whom I could have wished to have preceded in his long journey.

Matthews was indeed an extraordinary man; it has not entered into the heart of a stranger to conceive such a man there was the stamp of immortality in all he said or did;—and now what is he? When we see such men pass away and be no more-men, who seem created to display what the Creator could make his creatures, gathered into corruption, before the maturity of minds that might have been the pride of posterity, what are we to conclude? For my own part, I am bewildered. To me he was much, to Hobhouse every thing. My poor Hobhouse doted on Matthews. For me, I did not love quite so much as I honoured him; I was indeed so sensible of his infinite superiority, that though I did not envy, I stood in awe of it. He, Hobhouse, Davies, and myself, formed a coterie of our own at Cambridge and elsewhere. Davies is a wit and man of the world, and feels as much as such a character can do; but not as Hobhouse has been affected. Davies, who is not a scribbler, has always beaten us all in the war of words, and by his colloquial powers at once delighted and kept us in order. Hobhouse and myself always had the worst of it with the other two; and even Matthews yielded to the dashing vivacity of Scrope Davies. But I am talking to you of men, or boys, as if you cared about such beings.

I expect mine agent down on the 14th to proceed to Lancashire, where I hear from all quarters that I have a

very valuable property in coals, etc. I then intend to accept an invitation to Cambridge in October, and shall, perhaps, run up to town. I have four invitations-to Wales, Dorset, Cambridge, and Chester; but I must be a man of business. I am quite alone, as these long letters sadly testify. I perceive, by referring to your letter, that the Ode is from the author; make my thanks acceptable to him. His muse is worthy a nobler theme. You will write as usual, I hope. I wish you good evening, and am, etc.

181. To the Hon. Augusta Leigh.

[Six Mile Bottom, Newmarket.]

Newstead Abbey, Sept. 9th, 1811.

MY DEAR AUGUSTA,-My Rochdale affairs are understood to be settled as far as the Law can settle them, and indeed I am told that the most valuable part is that which was never disputed; but I have never reaped any advantage from them, and God knows if I ever shall. Mr. H., my agent, is a good man and able, but the most dilatory in the world. I expect him down on the 14th to accompany me to Rochdale, where something will be decided as to selling or working the Collieries. I am Lord of the Manor (a most extensive one), and they want to enclose, which cannot be done without me; but I go there in the worst humour possible and am afraid I shall do or say something not very conciliatory. In short all my affairs are going on as badly as possible, and I have no hopes or plans to better them as I long ago pledged myself never to sell Newstead, which I mean to hold in defiance of the Devil and Man.

I am quite alone and never see strangers without being sick, but I am nevertheless on good terms with my

1811.]

A SICK HOUSEHOLD.

31

neighbours, for I neither ride or shoot or move over my Garden walls, but I fence and box and swim and run a good deal to keep me in exercise and get me to sleep. Poor Murray is ill again, and one of my Greek servants is ill too, and my valet has got a pestilent cough, so that we are in a peck of troubles; my family Surgeon sent an Emetic this morning for one of them, I did not very well know which, but I swore Somebody should take it, so after a deal of discussion the Greek swallowed it with tears in his eyes, and by the blessing of it, and the Virgin whom he invoked to assist it and him, I suppose he'll be well tomorrow, if not, another shall have the next. So your Spouse likes children, that is lucky as he will have to bring them up; for my part (since I lost my Newfoundland dog,) I like nobody except his successor a Dutch Mastiff and three land Tortoises brought with me from Greece.

I thank you for your letters and am always glad to hear from you, but if you won't come here before Xmas, I very much fear we shall not meet here at all, for I shall be off somewhere or other very soon out of this land of Paper credit (or rather no credit at all, for every body seems on the high road to Bankruptcy), and if I quit it again I shall not be back in a hurry.

However, I shall endeavour to see you somewhere, and make my bow with decorum before I return to the Ottomans, I believe I shall turn Mussulman in the end.

You ask after my health; I am in tolerable leanness, which I promote by exercise and abstinence. I don't know that I have acquired any thing by my travels but a smattering of two languages and a habit of chewing Tobacco.1

Yours ever,
B.

1. To appease the pangs of hunger, and keep down his fat, Byron

182.-To Francis Hodgson.

Newstead Abbey, Sept. 9, 1811.

DEAR HODGSON,-I have been a good deal in your company lately, for I have been reading Juvenal and Lady Jane, etc., for the first time since my return. The Tenth Sat has always been my favourite, as I suppose indeed of everybody's. It is the finest recipe for making one miserable with his life, and content to walk out of it, in any language. I should think it might be redde with great effect to a man dying without much pain, in preference to all the stuff that ever was said or sung in churches. But you are a deacon, and I say no more. Ah! you will marry and become lethargic, like poor Hal of Harrow,' who yawns at 10 o' nights, and orders caudle annually.

I wrote an answer to yours fully some days ago, and, being quite alone and able to frank, you must excuse this subsequent epistle, which will cost nothing but the trouble of deciphering. I am expectant of agents to accompany me to Rochdale, a journey not to be anticipated with pleasure; though I feel very restless where I am, and shall probably ship off for Greece again; what nonsense it is to talk of Soul, when a cloud makes it melancholy and wine makes it mad.

Collet of Staines, your "most kind host," has lost that girl you saw of his. She grew to five feet eleven, and might have been God knows how high if it had pleased

was in the habit of chewing gum-mastic and tobacco. For the same reason, at a later date, he took opium. The mistake which he makes in his letter to Hodgson (December 8, 1811), "I do nothing but eschew tobacco," is repeated in Don Juan (Canto XII. stanza xliii.)—

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"In fact, there's nothing makes me so much grieve,

As that abominable tittle-tattle,

Which is the cud eschewed by human cattle."

1. See Letters, vol. i. p. 195, note 1.

2. For Henry Drury, see Letters, vol. i. p. 41, note 2.

1811.]

WOMAN IN HER PROPER SPHERE.

33

Him to renew the race of Anak; but she fell by a ptisick, a fresh proof of the folly of begetting children. You knew Matthews. Was he not an intellectual giant ? I knew few better or more intimately, and none who deserved more admiration in point of ability.

Scrope Davies has been here on his way to Harrowgate; I am his guest in October at King's, where we will "drink deep ere we depart." "Won't you, won't you, "won't you, won't you come, Mr. Mug?”1 We did not amalgamate properly at Harrow; it was somehow rainy, and then a wife makes such a damp; but in a seat of celibacy I will have revenge. Don't you hate helping first, and losing the wings of chicken? And then, conversation is always flabby. Oh! in the East women are in their proper sphere, and one has no conversation at all. My house here is a delightful matrimonial mansion. When I wed, my spouse and I will be so happy !—one in each wing.

I presume you are in motion from your Herefordshire station, and Drury must be gone back to Gerund Grinding. I have not been at Cambridge since I took my M.A. degree in 1808. Eheu fugaces! I look forward to meeting you and Scrope there with the feelings of other times. Capt. Hobhouse is at Enniscorthy in Juverna. I wish he was in England.

Yours ever,

B.

1. Byron may possibly allude to "Matthew Mug," a character in Foote's Mayor of Garratt, said to be intended for the Duke of Newcastle. In act ii. sc. 2 of the comedy occurs this passage

"Heel-Tap. Now, neighbours, have a good caution that this "Master Mug does not cajole you; he is a damn'd palavering fellow." But there is no passage in the play which exactly corresponds with Byron's quotation.

2. Hodgson was staying with his uncle, the Rev. Richard Coke, of Lower Moor, Herefordshire.

D