enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tomb: HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRITTEN IN WATER.'"

With

"I have been here to-day, to see the graves of Keats and Shelley. a cloudless sky, and the most delicious air ever breathed, we sat down upon the marble slab laid over the ashes of poor Shelley, and read his own lament over Keats, who sleeps just below, at the foot of the hill. The cemetery is rudely formed into three terraces, with walks between; and Shelley's grave occupies a small nook above, made by the projections of a mouldering walltower, and crowned with ivy and shrubs, and a peculiarly fragrant yellow flower, which perfumes the air around for several feet. The avenue by which you ascend from the gate is lined with high bushes of the marsh rose in the most luxuriant bloom, and all over the cemetery the grass is thickly mingled with flowers of every dye."*

No. XXVI.

THOMAS MOORE.

Moore's anecdotal talents have been referred to at page 270 of this volume. In 1835 I dined with Moore, in Dublin, at a large party of upward of twenty persons, many of whom were distinguished intellectual people. At dinner I sat between Moore and a barrister not remarkable for talent, but highly re spected, an amiable, inoffensive, meek, well-mannered, gentleman-like, goodhumored person, naturally timid and retiring, and rather advanced in years, who was named Cornelius, but was no centurion, and, though familiarly called Con by his intimate friends, was never supposed to be a descendant of him "of the hundred fights." On the opposite side, near the head of the table, sat an important-looking personage, tall, gaunt, and bony, once evidently of Herculean strength and stature, now bent and somewhat shrunken, but still of formidable breadth of shoulders and size of hands, if one might be allowed to use that expression in speaking of such enormous appendages to human wrists. This portentous-looking gentleman, of a grim aspect and a gruff voice, was the redoubtable Tom, commonly spoken of as a younger brother of Jack the Giant-Killer. Tom was the representative of a class now happily defunct in Ireland-the Sir Lucius O'Trigger school, of pleasure-loving, reckless, rollicking, elderly gentlemen of good family, who always went into society on full cock, and generally went off, leaving some striking proofs of their valor, and the value they set on their own opinions, behind them--men of a great fame for fighting duels, of indisputable authority in all controversies concerning hair-triggers and matters of etiquette in affairs of honor, in pacing the ground, and placing a friend well on it; capital judges of prime port and claret, flaming patriots after dinner, greatly disposed to be oratorical and tuneful, and with a slight dash of sedition in their songs and speeches. He belonged to that school whose disciples, like the good Master Shallows of former times, * Willis's Pencilings by the Way, p. 84.

as they grow old, remember "the mad days that they have spent," when they were "such swinge bucklers in all the Inns of Court," and "heard the chimes at night," and "drew a good long bow, and shot a good shoot"-veterans who had seen much service in the field with the hounds, after the fox and the hare, and in the hunt elsewhere, after other game, in their early days, when "the watchword was 'Hem, boys!'"-lusty fellows once, "who would have done any thing, and roundly too," but who, in their latter years, "poor esquires in the county," and justices of the peace, begin to think, “as death is certain, that all must die;" all their "old friends are dead," and then, being dejected, and becoming sanctimonious, kindly take the interests of religion and the state under their immediate protection, and ultimately obtain some celebrity as Cawtholic notabilities, "voteens, suffering Loyalists," and arbiters of all matters in controversy in society affecting their opinions of what is genteel, pious, or well-affected to the Constitution, and the Hanoverian succession, as established in the house of Brunswick.

ner.

Moore had been particularly joyous and brilliant in conversation during dinThe cloth was removed, the contagion of his wit and humor had spread around him, the dullest person in company had become animated, every one had some anecdote to tell. Poor Con, the barrister, the mildest and most harmless of men, told a story of Father O'Leary and the Protestant bishop of his diocese dining together, and joking on a point of discipline, the gist of the story being some facetious observation of the prelate, which had been taken in jest, and had been enjoyed as a joke by Father O'Leary himself. Every body at table laughed at the story but one person, and that unpleased and very unpleasant individual was Tom, who looked unutterable things, the obvious meaning of which was, "Shall we have incision? Shall we imbrue? Have we not hiren here?" "Now let the welkin roar !" Now for "a goodly tumult !"

Slowly, and with alarming solemnity of aspect, the large, bony frame of the fire-eater of former times was seen rising up, supporting its great bulk on the knuckles of both hands, planted on the table far inward toward the centre, and stretching across decanters and glasses in a most formidable attitude in the direction of the unhappy Cornelius, who looked exceedingly astonished and alarmed. Moore gazed around him on the faces of the guests inquiringly, and, if he dared to speak, would evidently have asked what the deuce was the meaning of the coming row. The generality of the guests awaited the explosion, as if a thunderbolt was about to fall on the head of the petrified barrister. Tom took a minute or two to fix himself in his terrible position, and to concentrate his fiery glances and scathing frowns on the pale and shrinking victim, the ill-starred Con. Not a word was spoken, but a hollow, grumbling noise could be distinguished, a kind of preface to a horrid growl-" mugitus labyrinthi”—such a grumble as a sick giant, in the recesses of some deep cavern, might be expected to utter in extremity; and now the bellowing of the mountain of a man, marvelously distempered by his choler, commenced in good

earnest. His volcanic fury thus disembogued in a torrent of incoherent threats, denunciations, and invective:

66

How dar you speak disrepectfully of the clergy of my Church? How dar you do it, sir? I say, Con, how dar you insult my religion?"

Poor Con, terror-stricken, held up his hands imploringly, and, in most tremulous accents, vainly protested he meant no offense whatever to the faith or feelings of any man, woman, or child in Christendom.

"How dar you, Con-tell me what you mean? How dar you attempt to interrupt me? You had the baseness, Con, and you know it, sir, to insult the ministers of my religion. How dar you deny the cowardly attack, sir?” Con, pale as death, but with no better success than before, made another imploring appeal to be allowed to deny the alleged insult.

There was a time, Con, when, with this hand [lifting his right arm as he spoke, clinching his fist, and shaking it vehemently across the table at his victim]-there was a time, Con, and well you know it, when I would have smashed you for this outrage. But I scorn you too much to take any other than this slight notice of your heinous offense against every thing sacred and profane !"

Frowning awfully, the indignant champion resumed his seat, and the dismayed barrister, who began to pluck up his courage from the moment Tom declared his excess of scorn prevented him from having recourse to actual violence, began to sit up more perpendicularly in his chair; for, previously to that, he had been sinking gradually, fading away before the face of his infuriated assailant's overwhelming wrath, till it was to be feared he would eventually have slidden down altogether from his seat and slipped under the table. Silence reigned; the guests looked at one another, discreetly holding their tongues; Moore seemed to be exceedingly annoyed and sickened. After a little time, he whispered to me to follow him, and, to the great disappointment of the company, he rose before any of the guests had stirred, and took his departure. I followed him, and the first words he uttered when we were in the street were the following: "So disgusting an exhibition of brutality I never witnessed in my life."

We went to the theatre; it was a command night, and Lord and Lady Mulgrave were there in state. Moore was soon recognized by the audience, and greeted with loud cheers and plaudits. After a short time, one of the aids-de-camp came to the box where we were sitting, and conveyed an invitation to Moore to sup with his excellency at the vice-regal lodge. Moore then accompanied the aid-de-camp to the box of the vice-regal party, and on his appearance there the cheering for him was renewed. He returned to the box I was in before his excellency made his exit, and brought me an invitation from Lord Mulgrave (whom I had the honor of knowing in Jamaica) to the supper-party that night at the Park. I accompanied Moore to that entertainment, without exception the most delightful I ever enjoyed. The principal guests at supper were Lord and Lady Cloncurry, the lord who was a prisoner in the Tower in 1798, and his lady, the near relative of the foully-mur

dered Sir Edward Crosbie; Sir Grey Campbell and his lady, the eldest daughter of Lord Edward Fitzgerald; Thomas Moore, the historian of the rebel lord; and the humble individual who, a little later, was the author of the "Lives and Times of the United Irishmen." There were present also Miss Ellen Tree, Mr. Macready, and Sir Philip Crampton.

If the ghost of the Duke of Richmond, of the good old times of the Orange regime in the castle and the vice-regal lodge, and the unhappy shades of William Saurin and Lord Manners could only have come up and gazed that night on the company by whom the viceroy was surrounded, and among whom there was not one purple marksman or representative of an Orange lodge, how shocked they would have been! Moore that night sang and played several of his own beautiful melodies, in his own most exquisite style—more than one that had reference to persons who had figured in the stormy affairs of 1798 -songs which brought tears into the eyes of the daughter of Lord Edward Fitzgerald.

No. XXVII.
L. E. L.

Since the notice, in the first part of this volume, of Mrs. Maclean's death at Cape Coast Castle, and the circumstances attending it, was written, a publication has appeared, entitled "Recollections of Literary Characters and Celebrated Places," by Mrs. Thomson, author of " Memoirs of the Court of Henry the Eighth," "Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough," &c. In the second volume of the recent work of Mrs. Thomson,* there is a biographical sketch of L. E. L., the author's reminiscences of her, and (at page 92) an account of her decease, wherein some matters are stated for the immediate causes of Mrs. Maclean's death, for the first time presented to the public, which deserve attention, and the more so on account of Mrs. Thomson's claim to authentic sources of information for many of the alleged facts detailed by her. The author, previously referring to the marriage of Miss Landon with Mr. Maclean, says: The common surmise is, that L. E. L. married the Governor of Cape Coast to be married, to fly from the slander, to have a home and a sanction. No, these were not her reasons, for she was truly and ardently attached to one who she declared was the only man she ever loved. She confided in him, she pined in his absence, she sacrificed for him the friends, the country, the society to which she had been accustomed. But she made one false step."

The false step spoken of diffusely rather than explained was the fact of the acceptance of a suitor, who, having been ardently loved by poor L. E. L., the only one she had ever loved, all of a sudden, after being so accepted, and having carried on a correspondence with her, without any assigned or assignable cause or explanation, had ceased to hold any intercourse with her, and had * Recollections of Literary Characters, &c., vol. ii., p. 86.

betaken himself to Scotland, without any intimation of his departure from London, and thus left her in a state bordering on despair.

The mystery of the sudden breaking off of the marriage, however, terminated in Mr. Maclean's return from Scotland, the renewal of his engagement, a joyful wedding with a man who had seemed to Mrs. Thomson, at the time of the marriage, "like one who had buried all joy in Africa, or whose feelings had been frozen up during his last inauspicious visit to Scotland."

The marriage, which was attended by Sir E. B. Lytton, the kind and constant friend of Miss Landon, and which had been made a mystery of, according to Mrs. Thomson's account, for about a month after its celebration, was apparently the false step referred to. Had it been called a fatal one, there would have been something in the account not to be impugned; but that Mrs. Thomson's impressions of this marriage being the result of strong feelings of attachment, the ardent affection of first fond love on the part of the lady, are entirely erroneous, there can not be the slightest doubt. That Mrs. Thomson has stated correctly the words of Miss Landon declaratory of such sentiments, I have no doubt; but I know that pride has its anomalies as well as other passions, and does not bear, in great extremities, to be too literally interpreted; and it is difficult to conceive any greater extremity than the sacrifice which Miss Landon made of her happiness, in abandoning friends, country, and pursuits for the hand and name of Captain Maclean, a dreary home, and, as she anticipated, an early grave on the coast of Africa.

Mrs. Thomson, to a short passage of about a dozen lines in the text of her notice of L. E. L., adds a long note of six pages on the subject of her death. In the former we are told, "All that is known of her death is this: she was found, half an hour after taking from a black boy a cup of coffee brought by her order,' leaning against the door of her chamber, sitting as if she had sunk down in an effort to rush to the door for help. A bruise was on her cheek, a slight bruise on the hand which was pressed on the floor-(these details are not in the inquest, but are true)—an empty phial (so said the maid who found her) in her hand."

If Mrs. Thomson's account is correct, Mrs. Maclean was found by the English servant-woman, Mrs. Bailey, in a sitting posture at the door. But on the inquest, Mrs. Bailey swore she had found the body of her mistress lying on the floor near the entrance; and no evidence was given by any person examined on the inquest of any coffee having been brought to her that morning by a native servant.

Mrs. Thomson further adds, the black boy was about ten years of age who had brought the coffee, and that when Mrs. Bailey returned to the dressingroom, she found the cup standing empty on Mrs. Maclean's table. I never heard one syllable of this at Cape Coast. If such a circumstance took place, it was suppressed at the inquest, and it was withheld from me. But Mrs. Thomson says Mrs. Bailey mentioned this circumstance to the late Mrs. Liddiard, of Streatham.