give a baiocolo to see 'bating the rest of the same) author, and an occasional Edinburgh and Quarterly, as brief chroniclers of the times. Instead of this, here are Johnny Keats's poetry, and three novels, by God knows whom, except that there is Peg's name to one of them-a spinster whom I thought we had sent back to her spinning. Crayon is very good; Hogg's Tales rough but RACY, and welcome. LETTER CCCCLVII. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, Sure 160, 1820. "The Abbot has just arrived; many thanks; a also for the Monastery-when you send it!!! "The Abbot will have a more than ordinary interest for me, for an ancestor of mine by the moBooks of travel are expensive, and I don't want ther's side, Sir J. Gordon of Gight, the handsomest them, having travelled already; besides, they lie.- of his day, died on a scaffold at Aberdeen for his Thank the author of The Profligate' for his (or loyalty to Mary, of whom he was an imputed paraher) present. Pray send me no more poetry but mour as well as her relation. His fate was much what is rare and decidedly good. There is such a commented on in the Chronicles of the times. If I trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I mistake not, he had something to do with her esam ashamed to look at them. I say nothing against cape from Loch Leven, or with her captivity there. your parsons, your Smith's, and your Croly's-it is But this you will know better than I. all very fine-but pray dispense me from the plea"I recollect Loch Leven as it were but yesterday. sure. Instead of poetry if you will favor me with a I saw it in my way to England, in 1798, being then few soda powders, I shall be delighted; but all prose ten years of age. My mother who was as haughty as ('bating travels and novels NOT by Scott) is wel- Lucifer with her descent from the Stuarts, and her come, especially Scott's Tales of My Landlord, and right line from the old Gordons, not the Seyton Gordons, as she disdainfully termed the ducal branch, "In the notes to Marino Faliero, it may be as well told me the story, always reminding me how supeto say that Benintende' was not really of the Ten, rior her Gordons were to the southern Byrons,but merely Grand Chancellor, a separate office, (al-notwithstanding our Norman, and always masculine though important:) it was an arbitrary alteration of descent, which has never lapsed into a female, mine. The Doges too were all buried in St. Mark's as my mother's Gordons had done in her own perbefore Faliero. It is singular that when his son. pre so on. decessor, Andrea Dandolo died, the Ten made a law "I have written to you so often lately that the that all the future Doges should be buried with their brevity of this will be welcome. families, in their own churches,-one would think by a kind of presentiment. So that all that is said of his ancestral Doges, as buried at St. John's and Paul's, is altered from the fact, they being in St. Mark's. Make a note of this, and put Editor as the subscription to it. "As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not like to be twitted even with such trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and dram. pers. they having been real existences. "Yours, &c." LETTER CCCCLVIII. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, Sbre 170, 1820. "Enclosed is the Dedication of Marino Faliero Query,-is his title Baron or not? I Let me know your opinion, and so to Goethe. "I omitted Foscolo in my list of living Venetian think yes. worthies in the notes, considering him as an Italian forth. in general, and not a mere provincial like the rest; and as an Italian I have spoken of him in the preface to canto fourth of Childe Harold. "The French translation of us!!! oime! omiè! and the German; but I don't understand the latter, and his long dissertation at the end about the Fausts. Excuse haste. Of politics it is not safe to speak, but nothing is decided as yet. "I am in a very fierce humor at not having Scott's Monastery.-You are too liberal in quantity, and somewhat careless of the quality, of your missives. All the Quarterlies (four in number) I had had before from you, and two of the Edinbugh; but no matter, we shall have new ones by-and-by. No more Keats, I entreat-flay him alive; if some of you don't, I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin. "P. S. Let me know what Mr. Hobhouse and you have decided about the two prose letters and their publication. "I enclose you an Italian abstract of the German translator of Manfred's Appendix, in which you will perceive quoted what Goethe says of the whole body of English poetry, (and not of me in particu- * lar.) On this the Dedication is founded, as you will perceive, though I had thought of it before, for I look upon him a a great man.' 666 Dedication to Baron Goethe, &c., &c., &c. SIR, "In the Appendix to an English work lately translated into German and published at Leipsic, a judgment of yours upon English poetry is quoted as follows: "That in English poetry, great genius, "I don't feel inclined to care farther about 'Don universal power, a feeling of profundity, with suffiJuan.' What do you think a very pretty Italian cient tenderness and force, are to be found; but lady said to me the other day? She had read it in that altogether these do not constitute poets," &c., the French, and paid me some compliments, with due &c. DRAWBACKS, upon it. I answered that what she said was true, but that I suspected it would live longer than Childe Harold.-Ah, but,' (said she,) 'I would rather have the fame of Childe Harold for three years than an IMMORTALITY of Don Juan!' The truth is that it is TOO TRUE, and the women hate many things which strip off the tinsel of sentiment, and they are right, as it would rob them of their weapons. I never knew a woman who did not hate De Grammont's Memoirs for the same reason: even Lady used to abuse them. "Rose's work I never received. It was seized at Venice. Such is the liberality of the Huns, with their two hundred thousand men, that they dare not let such a volume as his circulate " "I regret to see a great man falling into a great mistake. This opinion of yours only proves that the "Dictionary of ten thousand living English authors" has not been translated into German. You will have read, in your friend Schlegel's version, the dialogue in Macbeth "There are ten thousand! Author's sir." Now, of these "ten thousand authors," there are actually nineteen hundred and eighty-seven poets, all alive at this moment, whatever their works may be, as their booksellers well know; and among these there are several who possess a far greater reputa tion than mine, although considerably less than them worth making a sect of. Perhaps there may yours. It is owing to this neglect on the part of be something of the kind sprung up lately, but I your German translators that you are not aware of have not heard much about it, and it would be such the works of * bad taste that I shall be very sorry to believe it." "There is also another, named * "I mention these poets by way of sample to enlighten you. They form but two bricks of our Babel, (WINDSOR bricks, by-the-way,) but may serve for a specimen of the building. LETTER CCCCLIX. TO MR. MOORE. "Ravenna, October 17, 1820. "It is, moreover, asserted that "the predominant character of the whole body of the present English poetry is a disgust and contempt for life." You owe me two letters-pay them. I want to But I rather suspect, that, by one single work of know what you are about. The summer is over, prose, you yourself have excited a greater contempt and you will be back to Paris. Apropos of Paris, for life than all the English volumes of poesy that it was not Sophia Gail, but Sophia Gay-the Engever were written. Madame de Staël says, that lish word Gay-who was my correspondent. Can "Werther has occasioned more suicides than the you tell who she is, as you did of the defunct **? most beautiful woman;" and I really believe that "Have you gone on with your poem? I have he has put more individuals out of this world than received the French of mine. Only think of being Napoleon himself,-except in the way of his profes- traduced into a foreign language in such an abomiPerhaps, illustrious sir, the acrimonious nable travesty! It is useless to rail, but one can't judgment passed by a celebrated northern journal help it. upon you in particular, and the Germans in general, Have you got my memoir copied? I have begun has rather indisposed you towards English poetry as a continuation. Shall I send it you as far as it is well as criticism. But you must not regard our crit- gone? sion. ics, who are at bottom good-natured fellows, con- "I can't say any thing to you about Italy, for the sidering their two professions-taking up the law government here look upon me with a suspicious in court, and laying it down out of it. No one can eye, as I am well informed. Pretty fellows as if more lament their hasty and unfair judgment, in I, a solitary stranger, could do any mischief. It is your particular, than I do; and I so expressed my- because I am fond of rifle and pistol shooting, I self to your friend Schlegel, in 1816, at Copet. believe; for they took the alarm at the quantity of "In behalf of my "ten thousand" living bre-cartridges I consumed,-the wiseacres ! thren, and of myself, I have thus far taken notice of an opinion expressed with regard to "English poetry" in general, and which merited notice, because it was YOURS. 666 My principal object in addressing you was to testify my sincere respect and admiration of a man, who, for half a century, has led the literature of a great nation, and will go down to posterity as the first literary character of his age. "You have been fortunate, sir, not only in the writings which have illustrated your name, but in the name itself, as being sufficiently musical for the articulation of posterity. In this you have the advantage of some of your countrymen, whose names would perhaps be immortal also-if any body could pronounce them. "You don't deserve a long letter-nor a letter at all-for your silence. You have got a new Bourbon, it seems, whom they have christened 'Dieu-donne;' perhaps the honor of the present may be disputed. Did you write the good lines on Laker? the "The queen has made a pretty theme for the journals. Was there ever such evidence published? Why it is worse than 'Little's Poems' or Don Juan.' If you don't write soon, I will make you a speech.' "Yours, &c." LETTER CCCCLX. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, Sbre 25, 1820. "Pray forward the enclosed to Lady Byron. It "It may, perhaps, be supposed, by this apparent tone of levity, that I am wanting in intentional respect towards you; but this will be a mistake: I am always flippant in prose. Considering you, as I really and warmly do, in common with all your own, and with most other nations, to be by far the is on business. first literary character which has existed in Europe | "In thanking you for the Abbot, I made four since the death of Voltaire, I felt, and feel, desirous grand mistakes. Šir John Gordon was not of Gight, to inscribe to you the following work,-not as being but of Bogagicht, and a son of Huntley's. He sufeither a tragedy or a poem, (for I cannot pronounce fered not for his loyalty, but in an insurrection. He upon its pretensions to be either one or the other, had nothing to do with Loch Leven, having been or both, or neither,) but as a mark of esteem and dead some time at the period of the Queen's conadmiration from a foreigner to the man who has finement: and, fourthly, I am not sure that he was been hailed in Germany "THE GREAT GOETHE." "I have the honor to be, With the truest respect, "Ravenna, 8bre 140, 1820. the Queen's paramour or no, for Robertson does not allude to this, though Walter Scott does, in the list he gives of her admirers (as unfortunate) at the close of 'the Abbot.' "I must have made all these mistakes in recollecting my mother's account of the matter, although she was more accurate than I am, being precise upon points of genealogy, like all the aristocratical Scotch. She had a long list of ancestors, like Sir Lucius O'Trigger's, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch Chronicles, Spalding, &c., in arms and doing mischief. I remember well passing Loch Leven, as well as the Queen's Ferry: we were on our way to England in 1798. "Yours. "P. S. I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a great struggle about what they call Classical, and Romantic,'-terms which were not subjects of classification in England, at least when I left it four or five years ago. Some of the English scribblers, it is true, abused Pope and Swift, but the "You had better not publish Blackwood and reason was that they themselves did not know how the Robert's prose, except what regards Pope;-you to write either prose or verse; but nobody thought have let the time slip by." LETTER CCCCLXI. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, 9bre 4, 1820. nearer the barbarians; who are in great force on the Po, and will pass it, with the first legitimate pretext. "There will be the devil to pay, and there is no saying who will or who will not be set down in his "I have received from Mr. Galignani the en-bill. If 'honor should come unlooked for' to any elosed letters, duplicates, and receipts, which ex-of your acquaintance, make a melody of it, that his plain themselves. As the poems are your property, ghost, like poor Yorick's, may have the satisfaction by purchase, right, and justice, all matters of pub- of being plaintively pitied-or still more nobly comlication, &c., &c., are for you to decide upon. I memorated, like 'Oh breathe not his' name.' In case know not how far my compliance with Mr. Galig-you should not think him worth it, here is a chant nani's request might be legal, and I doubt that it for you insteadwould not be honest. In case you choose to arrange with him, I enclose the permits to you, and in so doing I wash my hands of the business altogether. I sign them merely to enable you to exert the power you justly possess more properly. I will have nothing to do with it farther, except, in my answer to Mr. Galignani, to state that the letters, &c., &c., are sent to you, and the causes thereof. Yours, &c. "When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home, Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome, "To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan, Then battle for freedom wherever you can, And, if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted. "So you have gotten the letter of 'Epigrams'-I am glad of it. You will not be so, for I shall send Here is one I wrote for the endorseyou more. It was "If you can check these foreign pirates, do; if not, put the permissive papers in the fire. I can have no view nor object whatever, but to secure to you your property. "P. S. I have read part of the Quarterly just arrived; Mr. Bowles shall be answered: he is not quite ment of the Deed of Separation' in 1816; but the correct in his statement about English Bards and lawyers objected to it, as superfluous. Scotch Reviewers. They support Pope, I see, in written as we were getting up the signing and sealthe Quarterly let them continue to do so; it is a ing. **has the original. sin, and a shame, and a damnation to think that Pope!! should require it-but he does. Those miserable mountebanks of the day, the poets, disgra themselves and deny God in running down Pope, the most faultless of poets, and almost of men." " LETTER CCCCLXII. TO MR. MOORE. "Ravenna, Nov. 5, 1820. Of it "Endorsement to the Deed of Separation, in the April of 1816. "A year agɩ you swore, fond she! To love, to honor,' and to forth: "To Penelope, January 2, 1821. "This day, of all our days, has done "Tis just six years since we were one, "Thanks for your letter, which hath come somewhat costively, but better late than never. anon. Mr. Galignani, of the press, hath, it seems, been sub-planted and sub-pirated by another Parisian "Pray, excuse all this nonsense; for I must talk publisher, who has audaciously printed an edition of L. B.'s Works, at the ultra-liberal price of ten nonsense just now for fear of wandering to more franes, and (as Galignani piteously observes) eight serious topics, which, in the present state of things, francs only for booksellers! horresco referens.' is not safe by a foreign post. Galignani sends me, post haste, a permission with the Memoirs,' and have got as far as twelve more sheets. But I suspect they will be interrupted. for him from me, to publish, &c., &c., which permit I have signed and sent to Mr. Murray, of Albe-In that case I will send them on by post, though I marle street. Will you explain to G. that I have feel remorse at making a friend pay so much for no right to dispose of Murray's works without his postage, for we can't frank here beyond the frontier. "I shall be glad to hear of the event of the leave? and therefore I must refer him to M. to get Queen's concern. As to the ultimate effect, the the permit out of his claws-no easy matter I suspect. I have written to G. to say as much; but a most inevitable one to you and me (if they and we word of mouth from a great brother author' would live so long) will be that the Miss Moores and Miss convince him that I could not honestly have com- Byrons will present us with a great variety of plied with his wish, though I might legally. What grandchildren by different fathers. I could do I have done, viz., signed the warrant and sent it to Murray. Let the dogs divide the carcass, if it is killed to their liking. "I am glad of your epigram. It is odd that we should both let our wits run away with our sentiments; for I am sure that we are both Queen's men at bottom. But there is no resisting a clinch-it is so clever! Apropos of that we have a dipthong' also in this part of the world-not a Greek, but a Spanish one-do you understand me?-which is about to blow up the whole alphabet. It was first pronounced at Naples, and is spreading; but we are "The talent you approve of is an amiable one, "The death of Waite is a shock to the-teeth, and might prove a national service,' but unfortu- as well as to the feelings of all who knew him. nately I must be angry with a man before I draw Good God, he and Blaket both gone! I left them his real portrait; and I can't deal in generals,' so both in the most robust health, and little thought that I trust never to have provocation enough to of the national loss in so short a time as five years. make a gallery. If the parson' had not by many They were both as much superior to Wellington in little dirty sneaking traits provoked it, should rational greatness, as he who preserves the hair and have been silent, though I had observed him. the teeth is preferable to bloody blustering warHere follows an alteration: put "Devil, with such delight in damning, That if at the resurrection Unto him the free election Of his future could be given, 'Twould be rather Hell than Heaven; rior' who gains a name by breaking heads and knocking out grinders. Who succeeds him? Where is tooth-powder, mild, and yet efficaciouswhere is tincture-where are clearing-roots and brushes now to be obtained? Pray obtain what information you can upon these Tusculan questions. My jaws ache to think on't. Poor fellows! I anticipated seeing both again; and yet they are that is to say, if these two new lines do not too gone to that place where both teeth and hair last much lengthen out and weaken the amiability of the longer than they do in this life. I have seen a original thought and expression. You have a thousand graves opened, and always perceived, that discretionary power about showing. I should think whatever was gone, the teeth and hair remain with that Croker would not disrelish a sight of these those who had died with them. Is not this odd? light little humorous things, and may be indulged They go the very first things in youth, and yet last the longest in the dust, if people will but die to pre"Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure; serve them! It is a queer life, and a queer death, but I can back a horse and fire a pistol without that of mortals. thinking or blinking' like Major Sturgeon; I have "I knew that Waite had married, but little fed at times for two months together on sheer biscuit and water, (without metaphor ;) I can get over seventy or eighty miles a day riding post, and swim five at a stretch, as at Venice, in 1818, or at least I could do, and have done it ONCE. now and then. # * You thought that the other deccase was so soon to overtake him. Then he was such a delight, such a coxcomb, such a jewel of a man! There is a tailor at Bologna so like him! and also at the top of his profession. Do not neglect this commission. Who "I know Henry Matthews; he is the image, to or what can replace him? What says the public? the very voice, of his brother Charles, only darker "I remand you the preface. Don't forget that -his cough his in particular. The first time I ever the Italian extract from the Chronicle must be met him was in Scrope Davies's room after his translated. With regard to what you say of rebrother's death, and I nearly dropped, thinking touching the Juans and the Hints, it is all very that it was his ghost. I have also dined with him well; but I can't furbish. I am like the tiger, (in in his rooms at King's College. Hobhouse once poesy,) if I miss the first spring I go growling back purposed a similar memoir; but I am afraid the to my jungle. There is no second: I can't correct; letters of Charles's correspondence with me (which I can't, and I won't. Nobody ever succeeds in it, are at Whitton with my other papers) would hardly great or small. Tasso remade the whole of his do for the public; for our lives were not over strict, Jerusalem; but who ever reads that version? all and our letters somewhat lax upon most subjects. the world goes to the first. Pope added to The Rape of the Lock,' but did not reduce it. must take my things as they happen to be. If they are not likely to suit, reduce their estimate accordingly. I would rather give them away than hack and hew them. I don't say that you are not right; I merely repeat that I cannot better them. I must either make a spoon or spoil a horn;' and there's an end. "Yours. "P. S. Of the praises of that little *** Keats, "The White Lady of Arvenel,' is not quite so I shall observe, as Johnson did when Sheridan the good as a real well authenticated (Dona Bianca') actor got a pension, What! has he got a pension? White Lady of Colalto, or spectre in the Marca Then it is time that I should give up mine!' Trivigiana, who has been repeatedly seen. There body could be prouder of the praise of the Edinburgh is a man (a huntsman) now alive who saw her also. than I was, or more alive to their censure, as I Hoppner could tell you all about her, and so can showed in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. At Rose, perhaps. I myself have no doubt of the fact, present, all the men they have ever praised are dehistorical and spectral. She always appeared on graded by that insane article. Why don't they reparticular occasions, before the deaths of the family, view and praise Solomon's Guide to Health?' &c., &c. I heard Madame Benzoni say, that she it is better sense and as much poetry as Johnny knew a gentleman who had seen her cross his room Keats. at Colalto Castle. Hoppner saw and spoke with "Last week I sent you a correspondence with Galignani, and some documents on your property. You have now, I think, an opportunity of checking, or at least limiting, those French republications. You may let all your authors publish what they please against me and mine. A publisher is not, and cannot be responsible for all the works that issue from his printer's. No 64 Bowles must be bowled down. 'Tis a sad match the huntsman, who met her at the chase, and never at cricket if he can get any notches at Pope's exhunted afterward. She was a girl attendant, who, pense. If he once get into Lord's ground,' (to one day dressing the hair of a Countess Colalto, continue the pun, because it is foolish,) I think I was seen by her mistress to smile upon her husband could beat him in one innings. You did not know, in the glass. The Countess had her shut up in the perhaps, that I was once (not metaphorically, but wall of the castle, like Constance de Beverly. Ever really) a good cricketer, particularly in batting, and after, she haunted them and all the Colaltos. She I played in the Harrow match against the Etonians is described as very beautiful and fair. It is well in 1805, gaining more notches (as one of our chosen authenticated. eleven) than any, except Lord Ipswich and Brookman, on our side." His dentist. † A celebrated hair-dresser, than any man. LETTER CCCCLXV. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, 9bre 12, 1820. used to sit up late in our friars' dresses, drinking Burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not, out of the skull-cup, and all sorts of glasses, and buffooning all round the house, in our conventual garments. Matthews always denominated me the "What you said of the late Charles Skinner Mat- Abbot,' and never called me by any other name in .hews has set me to my recollections; but I have his good humors, to the day of his death. The harne been able to turn up any thing which would do mony of these our symposia was somewhat interr the purposed memoir of his brother, even if he rupted, a few days after our assembling, by Mathad previously done enough during his life to sanc-thews's threatening to throw bold Webster, (as he tion the introduction of anecdotes so merely person- was called, from winning a foot-match, and a horseal. He was, however, a very extraordinary man, match, the first from Ipswich to London, and the and would have been a great one. No one ever suc- second from Brightelmstone,) by threatening to ceeded in a more surpassing degree than he did, as throw bold Webster' out of a window, in consefar as he went. He was indolent too; but whenever quence of I know not what commerce of jokes he stripped, he overthrew all antagonists.. His con- ending in this epigram. Webster came to me and quests will be found registered at Cambridge, partic- said, that his respect and regard for me as host larly his Downing one, which was hotly and highly would not permit him to call out any of my guests, contested, and yet easily won. Hobhouse was his and that he should go to town next morning.' He most intimate friend, and can tell you more of him did. It was in vain that I represented to him that William Bankes also a great deal. the window was not high, and that the turf under I myself recollect more of his oddities than of his it was particularly soft. Away he went. academical qualities, for we lived most together at a Matthews and myself had travelled down from very idle period of my life. When I went up to London together, talking all the way incessantly Trinity in 1805, at the age of seventeen and a half, upon one single topic. When we got to Loughbor I was miserable and untoward to a degree. I was ough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge wretched at leaving Harrow, to which I had become for a moment to some other subject, at which he attached during the last two years of my stay there; was indignant. 'Come,' said he, don't let us break wretched at going to Cambridge instead of Oxford, through-let us go on as we began, to our journey's (there were no rooms vacant at Christchurch,) end; and so he continued, and was entertaining as wretched from some private domestic circumstances ever to the very end. He had previously occupied, of different kinds, and consequently about as unso- during my year's absence from Cambridge, my cial as a wolf taken from the troop. So that, al- rooms in Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones the though I knew Matthews, and met him often then tutor in his odd way, had said on putting him in, at Bankes's, (who was my collegiate pastor, and mas-Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your attention not ter, and patron,) and at Rhodes's, Milnes's, Price's, to damage any of the moveables, for Lord Byron, Dick's, Macnamara's, Farrell's, Galley Knight's, sir, is a young man of tumultuous passions.' Matand others of that set of contemporaries, yet I was thews was delighted with this; and whenever any neither intimate with him nor with any else, except body came to visit him, begged them to handle the my old schoolfellow Edward Long, (with whom I very door with caution; and used to repeat Jones's used to pass the day in riding and swimming,) and admonition, in his tone and manner. There was a William Bankes, who was good-naturedly tolerant large mirror in the room, on which he remarked, of my ferocities. 'that he thought his friends were grown uncoin"It was not till 1807, after I had been upwards of monly assiduous in coming to see him, but he soon a year away from Cambridge, to which I had return- discovered that they only came to see themselves.' ed again to reside for my degree, that I became one Jones's phrase of tumultuous passions,' and the of Matthews's familiars, by means of Hobhouse, who, whole scene had put him into such good humor, that after hating me for two years, because I wore a I verily believe, that I owed to it a portion of his white hat and a gray coat, and rode a gray horse,' good graces. (as he says himself,) took me into his good graces "When at Newstead, somebody by accident rubbecause I had written some poetry. I had always bed against one of his white silk stockings, one day lived a good deal, and got drunk occasionally, in before dinner; of course the gentleman apologized. their company; but now we became really friends in Sir,' answered Matthews, it may be all very well a morning. Matthews, however, was not at this for you, who have a great many silk stockings, to period resident in college. I met him chiefly in dirty other people's; but to me, who have only this London, and at uncertain periods at Cambridge. one pair, which I have put on in honor of the Hobhouse, in the mean time, did great things: he Abbot' here, no apology can compensate for such founded the Cambridge Whig Club,' (which he carelessness; besides the expense of washing.' He seems to have forgotten,) and the Amicable Socie- had the same sort of droll sardonic way about every ty,' which was dissolved in consequence of the thing. A wild Irishman named F**, one evening members constantly quarrelling, and made himself beginning to say something at a large supper at very popular with us youth,' and no less formida- Cambridge, Matthews roared out Silence!' and ble to all tutors, professors, and heads of colleges. then, pointing to F**, cried out, in the words of William Bankes was gone; while he stayed he ruled the oracle, Orson is endowed with reason.' You the roast, or rather the roasting, and was father of may easily suppose that Orson lost what reason he all mischiefs. had acquired, on hearing this compliment. When "Matthews and I, meeting in London, and else- Hobhouse published his volume of poems, the Miswhere, became great cronies. He was not good-cellany, (which Matthews would call the 'Miss-selltempered-nor am I-but with a little tact his tem- any,' all that could be drawn from him was, that per was manageable, and I thought him so superior the preface was extremely like Walsh.' Hobhouse a man, that I was willing to sacrifice something to thought this at first a compliment; but we never his humors, which were often, at the same time, could make out what it was, for all we know of amusing and provoking. What became of his pa- Walsh is his Ode to King William, and Pope's epipers, (and he certainly had many,) at the time of his thet of knowing Walsh.' When the Newstead death, was never known. I mention this by the way, party broke up for London, Hobhouse and Matfearing to skip it over, and as he wrote remarkably thews, who were the greatest friends possible, well, both in Latin and English. We went down agreed, for a whim, to walk together to town. They to Newstead together, where I had got a famous qurrelled by the way, and actually walked the cellar, and monks' dresses from a masquerade ware- latter half of their journey, occasionally passing house. We were a company of some seven or eight, and repassing, without speaking. When Matthews with an occasional neighbor or so for visitors, and had got to Highgate, he had spent all his money but |