"I have gotten a box for Othello tonight, and send the ticket for your friends the Rancliffes. Iseriously recommend to you to recommend to them to go for half an hour, if only to see the third act- - they will not easily have another opportunity. We-at least, I cannot be there, so there will be no one in their way. Will you give or send it to them? it will come with a better grace from you than me.

"I am in no good plight, but will dine at's with you, if I can. There is music and Covent-g.

"Will you go, at all events, to my box there afterwards, to see a début of a young

16' in the Child of Nature?""

1 Miss Foote's first appearance, which we witnessed together. [In April, 1831, Miss Foote became Countess of Harrington.]

TO MR. MOORE.

44 Sunday matin.

"Was not Iago perfection? particularly the last look. I was close to him (in the orchestra), and never saw an English countenance half so expressive.

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting; and, as it is fitting there should be good plays, now and then, besides Shakspeare's, I wish you or Campbell would write one: the rest of us youth' have not heart enough.

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You were cut up in the Champion — is it not so? this day so am I-even to shocking the editor. The critic writes well; and as, at present, poesy is not my passion predominant, and my snake of Aaron has swallowed up all the other serpents, I don't feel fractious. I send you the paper, which I mean to take in for the future. We go to M.'s together. Perhaps I shall see you before, but don't let me bore you, now nor ever.

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&c."

even?

Ever, as now, truly and affectionately,

TO MR. MOORE.

"May 5. 1814.

"Do you go to the Lady Cahir's 2 this If you do go and whenever we are bound to the same follies- let us embark in the same Shippe of Fooles.' I have been up till five, and up at nine; and feel heavy with only winking for the last three or four nights.

"I lost my party and place at supper trying to keep out of the way of * * * *. I would have gone away altogether, but that would have appeared a worse affectation than t'other. You are of course engaged to dinner, or we may go quietly together to my box at Covent Garden, and afterwards to this assemblage. Why did you go away so

soon?

detain you so late, but I suppose you will be at Lady Jersey's. I am going earlier with Hobhonse. You recollect that tomorrow we sup and see Kean.

and I) setting paper warriors in array in the Indian seas. Does not this sound like fame - something almost like posterity? It is something to have scribblers squabbling about us 5000 miles off, while we are agreeing so

The supper to which he here looks forward, took place at Watier's, of which club he had lately become a member; and, as it may convey some idea of his irregular mode of diet, and thus account, in part, for the frequent derangement of his health, I shall here attempt, from recollection, a description of his supper on this occasion. We were to have been joined by Lord Rancliffe, who however did not arrive, and the party accordingly consisted but of ourselves. Having taken upon me to order the repast, and knowing that Lord Byron, for the last two days, had done nothing towards sustenance, beyond eating a few biscuits and (to appease appetite) chewing mastic, I desired that we should have a good supply of, at least, two kinds of fish. My companion, however, confined himself to lobsters, and of these finished two or three, to his own share, interposing, sometimes, a small liqueur-glass of strong white brandy, sometimes a tumbler of very hot water, and then pure brandy again, to the amount of near half a dozen small glasses of the latter, without which, alternately with the hot water, he appeared to think the lobster could not be digested. After this, we had claret, of which having despatched two bottles between us, at about four o'clock in the morning we parted.

As Pope has thought his “delicious lobster-nights" worth commemorating, these particulars of one in which Lord Byron was concerned may also have some interest.

Among other nights of the same description which I had the happiness of passing with him, I remember once, in returning home from some assembly at rather a late hour, we saw lights in the windows of his old haunt Stevens's, in Bond Street, and agreed to stop there and sup. On entering, we found an old friend of his, Sir Godfrey Webster, who joined our party, and the lobsters and brandy and water being put in requisition, it was (as usual on such occasions) broad daylight before we separated.

LETTER 182. TO MR. MOORE.

"May 23. 1814.

"I must send you the Java government gazette of July 3d, 1813, just sent to me by Murray. Only think of our (for it is you

pocket;

me.

--

"P. S.-Oh the anecdote!"

"B.

letter he recurs more than once in the Journals which he kept abroad; as thus, in a passage of his "Detached Thoughts,”where it will be perceived that, by a trifling lapse of memory, he represents himself as having produced this gazette, for the first time, on our way to dinner.

To the circumstance mentioned in this

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In the year 1814, as Moore and I were going to dine with Lord Grey in Portman Square, I pulled out a ‘Java Gazette' (which Murray had sent to me), in which there was a controversy on our respective merits as poets. It was amusing enough that we should be proceeding peaceably to the same table while they were squabbling about us in the Indian seas (to be sure the paper was dated six months before), and filling columns with Batavian criticism. But this is fame, I presume.'

وو

The following poem, written about this time, and, apparently, for the purpose of being recited at the Caledonian Meeting, I insert principally on account of the warm feeling which it breathes towards Scotland and her sons:

"Who hath not glow'd above the page where Fame
Hath fix'd high Caledon's unconquer'd name;
The mountain-land which spurn'd the Roman chain,
And baffled back the fiery-crested Dane,
Whose bright claymore and hardihood of hand
No foe could tame-no tyrant could command.

"That race is gone-but still their children breathe,
And glory crowns them with redoubled wreath :
O'er Gael and Saxon mingling banners shine,
And, England! add their stubborn strength to thine.
The blood which flow'd with Wallace flows as free,
But now 'tis only shed for fame and thee !
Oh! pass not by the Northern veteran's claim,
But give support- the world hath given him fame!
"The humbler ranks, the lowly brave, who bled
While cheerly following where the mighty led-
Who sleep beneath the undistinguish'd sod
Where happier comrades in their triumph trod,
To us bequeath - 'tis all their fate allows --
The sireless offspring and the lonely spouse:
She on high Albyn's dusky hills may raise
The tearful eye in melancholy gaze,
Or view, while shadowy auguries disclose
The Highland seer's anticipated woes,

'As I shall probably not see you here to-day, I write to request that, if not inconvenient to yourself, you will stay in town till Sunday; if not to gratify me, yet to please a great many others, who will be very sorry to lose you. As for myself, I can only repeat that I wish you would either remain a long time with us, or not come at all; for these snatches of society make the subsequent separations bitterer than ever.

I believe you think that I have not been quite fair with that Alpha and Omega of beauty, &c. with whom you would willingly have united me. But if you consider what her sister said on the subject, you will less wonder that my pride should have taken the alarm; particularly as nothing but the every-day flirtation of every-day people ever occurred between your heroine and myself. Had Lady ** appeared to wish it – -or even not to oppose it-I would have gone on, and very possibly married (that is, if the other had been equally accordant) with the same indifference which has frozen over the Black Sea' of almost all my passions. It is that very indifference which makes me so uncertain and apparently capricious. It is not eagerness of new pursuits, but that nothing impresses me sufficiently to fix; neither do I

"What say I?'-not a syllable further in prose;
I'm your man of all measures,' dear Tom, so, here
goes!

Here goes, for a swim on the stream of old Time,
On those buoyant supporters the bladders of rhyme.
If our weight breaks them down, and we sink in the
flood,

We are smother'd, at least, in respectable mud,
Where the divers of bathos lie drown'd in a heap,
And Southey's last pæan has pillow'd his sleep ;-
That felo de se' who, half drunk with his malmsey,
Walk'd out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea,

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feel disgusted, but simply indifferent to almost all excitements. The proof of this is, that obstacles, the slightest even, stop me. This can hardly be timidity, for I have done some impudent things too, in my time; and in almost all cases, opposition is a stimulus. In mine, it is not; if a straw were in my way, I could not stoop to pick it up.

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I have sent this long tirade, because I would not have you suppose that I have been trifling designedly with you or others. If you think so, in the name of St. Hubert (the patron of antlers and hunters) let me be married out of hand - I don't care to whom, so it amuses any body else, and don't interfere with me much in the day time.

LETTER 184.

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Ever, &c."

TO MR. MOORE.

"June 14. 1814.

"I could be very sentimental now, but I won't. The truth is, that I have been all my life trying to harden my heart, and have not yet quite succeeded - though there are great hopes- and you do not know how it sunk with your departure. What adds to my regret is having seen so little of you during your stay in this crowded desert, where one ought to be able to bear thirst like a camel, the springs are so few, and most of them so muddy.

"The newspapers will tell you all that is to be told of emperors, &c. They have dined, and supped, and shown their flat faces in all thoroughfares, and several saloons. Their uniforms are very becoming, but rather short in the skirts; and their conversation is a catechism, for which and the answers I refer you to those who have heard it.

"I think of leaving town for Newstead soon. If so, I shall not be remote from your recess, and (unless Mrs. M. detains you at home over the caudle-cup and a new cradle) we will meet. You shall come to

Singing Glory to God' in a spick-and-span stanza, The like (since Tom Sternhold was choked) never

man saw.

"The papers have told you, no doubt, of the fusses,
The fêtes, and the gapings to get at these Russes -
Of his Majesty's suite, up from coachman to Hetman,-
And what dignity decks the flat face of the great man.
I saw him, last week, at two balls and a party,—
For a prince, his demeanour was rather too hearty.
You know, we are used to quite different graces,

me, or I to you, as you like it ;- but meet we will. An invitation from Aston has reached me, but I do not think I shall go. I have also heard of ***— I should like to see her again, for I have not met her for years; and though the light that ne'er can shine again' is set, I do not know that 'one dear smile like those of old' might not make me for a moment forget the dulness' of life's stream.

"I am going to R **'s to-night-to one of those suppers which ought to be dinners.' I have hardly seen her, and never him, since you set out. I told you, you were the last link of that chain. As for * *, we have not syllabled one another's names since. The post will not permit me to continue my scrawl. More anon.

Ever, dear Moore, &c.

Have you

TO MR. MURRAY.

my

" June 14. 1814.

"I return your packet of this morning. heard that Bertrand has returned to Paris with the account of Napoleon's having lost his senses? It is a report; but, if true, I must, like Mr. Fitzgerald and Jeremiah (of lamentable memory), lay claim to prophecy; that is to say, of saying, that he ought to go out of his senses, in the - the penultimate stanza of a certain Ode 2, which, having been pronounced nonsense by several profound critics, has a still further pretension, by its unintelligibility, to inspirEver, &c.

ation.

LETTER 185.

one.

66

TO MR. ROGERS.

❝ June 9. 1814.

"I am always obliged to trouble you with my awkwardnesses, and now I have a fresh Mr. W.3 called on me several times, and I have missed the honour of making his acquaintance, which I regret, but which you, who know my desultory and uncertain habits, will not wonder at, and will, I am sure, attribute to any thing but a wish to offend a person who has shown me much kindness,

1 The Journal from which I have given extracts in the preceding pages.

2 ["Unless, like he of Babylon,

All sense is with thy sceptre gone,

Life will not long confine

That spirit pour'd so widely forth

So long obey'd-so little worth!" Works, p. 462.]

The following undated notes to Mr. Rogers must have been written about the same

time :

"Sunday.

"Your non-attendance at Corinne's is very à propos, as I was on the eve of sending you an excuse. I do not feel well enough to go there this evening, and have been obliged to despatch an apology. I believe I need not add one for not accepting Mr. Sheridan's invitation on Wednesday, which I fancy both you and I understood in the with him the saying of Mirabeau, that words are things,' is not to be taken literally. "Ever, &c."

same sense:

"June 27. 1814. "You could not have made me a more acceptable present than Jacqueline, she is all grace and softness, and poetry; there is so much of the last, that we do not feel the want of story, which is simple, yet enough. I wonder that you do not oftener unbend to more of the same kind. I have some sympathy with the softer affections, though very little in my way, and no one can depict them so truly and successfully as yourself. I have half a mind to pay you in kind, or rather unkind, for I have just 'supped full of horror' in two cantos of darkness and dismay.

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printer, and nearly ready for publication. He had, before I left town, repeated to me, as we were on our way to some evening party, the first one hundred and twenty lines of the poem, which he had written the day before, at the same time giving me a general sketch of the characters and the

story.

His short notes to Mr. Murray, during the printing of this work, are of the same impatient and whimsical character as those, of which I have already given specimens, in my account of his preceding publications: but, as matter of more interest now presses upon us, I shall forbear from transcribing them at length. In one of them he says, “I have just corrected some of the most horrible blunders that ever crept into a proof:"-in another, "I hope the next proof will be better; this was one which would have consoled Job, if it had been of a third contains his enemy's book:"", only the following words: "Dear sir, you demanded more battle- there it is. Yours, &c."

"July 8, 1814. "I returned to town last night, and had some hopes of seeing you to-day, and would have called, but I have been (though in exceeding distempered good health) a little head-achy with free living, as it is called, and am now at the freezing point of returning soberness. Of course, I should be sorry that our parallel lines did not deviate into intersection before you return to the country, after that same nonsuit', whereof the papers have told us, but, as you must be much occupied, I won't be affronted, should your time and business militate against our meeting.

"Rogers and I have almost coalesced into a joint invasion of the public. Whether it will take place or not, I do not yet know, and I am afraid Jacqueline (which is very beautiful) will be in bad company. But in this case, the lady will not be the sufferer.

"I am going to the sea, and then to Scotland; and I have been doing nothing, - that is, no good, — and am very truly, &c."

2 Lord Byron afterwards proposed that I should make a third in this publication; but the honour was a perilous one, and I begged leave to decline it.

S