TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. POESONIANA. ISAAC FOOT LIBRARY PKINTED BV JOHN BALE AND SONS, GREAT TITCHFIELD STREET, OXFORD STREET, W. RECOLLECTIONS Table-talk of samuel Rogers. TO WHICH IS ADDED porsoniana. EDITED I!Y THE LATE KEV. ALEXANDEE DYCE. NEW SOUTHGATE : H. A. ROGEES, 2, BOUNDS GEEEN EOAD. 1887. A^ > ^ LIBRARY IZ^ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ;^^ SANTA BARJBAIiA ^^7 PREFACE TO THE TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL KOGEKS. Samuel Kogeus was born at Stoke Newiugton, SOtli July, 17G3. His first publication, An Ode to Siiperstilion, ivUh some other Poems, ajDpeared in 1786 ; at which period the coldly classic Mason (then a veteran) and the feeble Hay- ley were perhaps the most popular of our living poets : Cowper, though The Task* was in print, had scarcely won all his fame; Crabbe had put forth only his earlier pieces ; and Darwin was yet to come. By The Pleasures of Memory^ in 1792, Mr, Rogers rose to high reputation ; which he fully maintained by his Epistle to a Friend, with other Poems, in 1798, He gave nothing new to the public till 1812, when he added Columhusi to a re-im- pression of his Poems. It was succeeded, in 1814 by his * The second volume of Cowper's Poems, containing The Tasli, is noticed with high praise in The Gentleman's Matjazine for Dec. 1785. t Seep. 153 (note) in the present volume. vi. PREFACE, Jacqueline^ in 181'J by his Human Life^ and in 1822 by the First Part*- of his Italy, which was not completed till several years after, and which closes the series of his works. During the long remainder of his days he confined himself to a few copies of occasional verses, one of them composed so late as ISSo.f — Of all that Mr. Rogers has written, Tlic Pleasures of Memory and the Epistle to a Friend have been generally the most ad- mired : it is questionable, however, if Human Life will not be regarded by posterity as his master-piece, — as pre-eminent in feeling, in graceful simplicity of diction, and in freedom of versification. Mr. Rogers commenced life by performing the duties of a clerk in his fiither's banking-house ; but after in- heriting a large share of the concern, he ceased to take an active part in its management ; and, himself an object of interest to society, he associated on familiar terms, during more than two generations, with all who were most distinguished for rank and political influence, or most eminent in literature and art. — Genius languishing for want of patronage was sure to find in Mr. Rogers a * PuWished anonymously : see Literary Gazette tov January Id, 1822, where its reviewer thinks " there can be little hesitation in ascribing it to Southey." t See the lines, " Hence to the altar," &c,, in hisPocjiis, p. 305, ed. 1853. PllEFACE. vii. generous patron. His purse was ever open to the dis- tressed : — of tlie prompt assistance wliich he rendered in the hour of need to various well-known individuals there is ample record ; but of his many acts of kindness and charity to the wholly obscure there is no memorial— at least on earth. The taste of JNIr, Rogers had been cultivated to the utmost refinement ; and, till the failure of his mental powers a short time previous to his death, he retained that love of the beautiful which was in him a passion : when more than ninety, and a prisoner to his chair, he still delighted to watch the changing colours of the even- ing sky, — to repeat passages of his favourite poets, — or to dwell on the merits of the great painters whose works adorned his walls. — By slow decay, and without any suffering, he died in St. James's Place, 18th December, 1855. From my first introduction to Mr. Rogers, I was in the habit of writing down, in all their minutiae, the anecdotes, &c. with which his conversation abounded ; and once on my telling him that I did so, he expressed himself pleased, — the rather, perhaps, because he some- times had the mortification of finding impatient listeners. Of those memoranda, which gradually accumulated to a large mass, a selection is contained in the following viii. PREFACE, pages; the subjects being arranged (as far as such mis- cellaneous matter would admit of arrangement) under distinct heads : and nothing having been inserted which was likely to hurt the feelings of the living. A. D. RECOLLECTIONS TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. I WAS taught by my mother, from my earhest in- fancy, to be tenderly kind towards the meanest liv- ing thing; and, however people may laugh, I some- times very carefully put a stray gnat or wasp out at the window. — My friend Lord Holland, though a kind-hearted man, does not mind killing flies and wasps; he says, "I have no feeling for msects." — "When I was on the Continent with Richard Sharp, we one day observed a woman amusing her child by holding what we at first thought was a mouse tied to a string, with which a cat was playing. Sharp was all indignation at the sight ; till, on looking more closely, he found that the supposed mouse was 2 KECOLLECTIOXS OF THE a small rat; upon which he exclauiied, "Oh, I have no pity for luts! " — People choose to give the term vermin to those animals that happen to like what they themselves like ; wasps eat peaches, and they call them vermin. — I can hardly persuade myself that there is no compensation in a future existence for the sufferings of animals in the present life,''' — for instance, when I see a horse in the streets un- mercifully flogged by its brutal driver. I well remember one of the heads of the rebels upon a pole at Temple-Bar, — a black shapeless lump. Another pole was bare, the head having dropt from it.t In my childhood, after doing anything wrong, I used always to feel miserable from a consciousness * Compare a, poem Ofi tlie Future Existence of Brutes, by Miss Seward,— Poi?;; Worlis, ii. 58. — Ed. f " The last heads which remained on the Bar were those of Fletcher and Townley. 'Yesterday,' says a uews-writer of the 1st of April, 1772, ' one of the rebels' heads on Temple Bar fell down. There is only one head now remaining.'" P. Cunning- ham's Ilcindhook of London, sub Temj'le Bar. — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 3 of having clone it : my parents were quite aware of this, and therefore seldom reproved me for a fault, — leaving me to reprove myself. When I was about thirteen, my father and mo- ther gave a great children's ball, at which many grown-up folks were also present. I was dancing a minuet with a pretty little girl ; and at the mo- ment when I ought to have put on my hat and given both hands to my partner, I threw the hat among the young ladies who were sitting on benches, and so produced great surprise and confusion in the room. This strange feat was occasioned by my sud- denly recollecting a story of some gallant youth who had signalised himself in the same way. In my boyhood, my father one day called me and my brothers into his room, and asked us each what professions we wished to follow. When my turn came, I said (to my father's annoyance) that I should like "to be a preacher;" for it was then the height of my ambition to figure in a pulpit ; — I thought there was nothing on earth so grand. This predilection, I believe, was occasioned chiefly 4 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE by the admiration I felt for Dr. Price and for his preaching. He was our neighbour (at Newington Green), and would often drop in, to spend the evening with us, in his dressing-gown : he would talk, and read the Bible, to us, till he sent us to bed in a frame of mind as heavenly as his own. He lived much in the society of Lord Lansdowne and other people of rank ; and his manners were ex- tremely polished. In the pulpit he was great in- deed, — making his hearers forget the iweacher and think only of the subject. The passage " On Virtue," cited from Price in Enfield's SiJcahcr, is a very favourite one with me, though probably it is quite unknown to readers of the present day. ["IN PEAISE OP VIKTUE. " Virtue is of intrinsic value and good desert, and of indispensable obligation ; not the creature of will, but necessary and immutable ; not local or tem- porary, but of equal extent and antiquity with the Divine Mind ; not a mode of sensation, but ever- lasting Truth ; not dependent on power, but the guide of all power. Virtue is the foundation of honour and esteem, and the source of all beauty, TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 5 order and happiness in nature. It is what confers vakie on all the other endowments and qualities of a reasonable being, to which they ought to be ab- solutely subservient, and without which, the more eminent they are, the more hideous deformities and the greater curses they become. The use of it is not confined to any one stage of our existence, or to any particular situation we can be in, but reaches through all the periods and circumstances of our being. — Many of the endowments and talents we now possess, and of which we are too apt to be proud, will cease entirely with the present state ; but this will be our ornament and dignity in every future state to which we may be removed. Beauty and wit will die, learning will vanish away, and all the arts of life be soon forgot ; but virtue will re- main for ever. This unites us to the whole rational creation, and fits us for conversing with any order of superior natures, and for a place in any part of God's works. It procures us the approbation and love of all wise and good beings, and renders them our allies and friends. — But what is of unspeakably greater consequence is, that it makes God our friend, assimilates and unites our minds to His, and engages 6 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE His almighty power in our defence. — Superior beings of all ranks are bound by it no less than ourselves. It has the same authority in all worlds that it has in this. The further any being is advanced in ex- cellence and perfection, the greater is his attach- ment to it, and the more he is under its influence. — To say no more ; it is the Law of the whole uni- verse ; it stands first in the estimation of the Deity ; its original is His nature ; and it is the very object that makes him lovely. " Such is the importance of virtue. — Of w^iat consequence, therefore, is it that we practise it ! — There is no argument or motive which is at all fitted to influence a reasonable mind, which does not call us to this. One virtuous disposition of soul is pre- ferable to the greatest natural accomplishments and abilities, and of more value than all the treasures of the world. — If you are wise, then, study virtue, and contemn every thing that can come in compe- tition with it. Remember, that nothing else de- serves one anxious thought or wish. Remember that this alone is honour, glory, wealth and happi- ness. Secure this, and you secure every thing. Lose this, and all is lost."] TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 7 My father belonged originally to the Church of England ; but, soon after his marriage with my mother (a very handsome and very amiable woman), he withdrew from it at her persuasion, and became one of Dr. Price's hearers. When I was a school-boy, I wore, like other school-boys, a cocked hat ; — we used to run about the fields, chasing butterflies, in cocked hats. Af- ter growing up, I have walked through St. Paul's Churchyard in a cocked hat. I saw Garrick act only once, — the part of Ranger in The Susjncious Husband. I remember that there was a great crowd, and that we waited long in a dark passage of the theatre, on our way to the pit. I was then a little boy. My father had promised to take me to see Garrick in Lear; but a fit of the mumps kept me at home. Before his going abroad, Garrick's attraction had much decreased ; Sir William Weller Pepys said that the pit was often almost empty. But, on his & EE COLLECTIONS OF THE return to England, people were mad about seeing him ; and Sir George Beaumont and several others used frequently to get admission into the pit, before the doors were opened to the public, by means of bribing the attendants, who bade them "be sure, as soon as the crowd rushed in, to pretend to be in a great heat, aiid to wipe their faces, as if they had just been strugghng for entrance." Jack Bannister told me, that one night he was behind the scenes of the theatre when Garrick was playing Lear ; and that the tones in which Garrick uttered the words, "0 fool, I shall go mad!"* ab- solutely thrilled him. Garrick used to pay an annual visit to Lord Spen- cer at Althorp ; where, after tea, he generally enter- tained the company by reading scenes from Shake- speare. Thomas Grenville,t who met him there, told me that Garrick would steal anxious glances at " You think I'll weep ; No, I'll not weep. I have full cause of weeping ; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws Or ere I'll weep. — Ofool, I shall go mad! " King Lear, act ii. sc. 4. — Ed. t The Eight Honourable T. G.— Ed. TABLE-TALK OP SAMUEL ROGERS. 9 the faces of his audience, to perceive what effect his reading produced ; that, one night, Garrick observed a lady Hstening to him very attentively, and yet never moving a muscle of her countenance ; and that, speaking of her next day, he said, " She seems a very worthy person ; but I hope that — that — that she won't be present at my reading to-night." — Another even- ing at Althorp, when Garrick was about to exhibit some particular stage-effect of which they had been talking, a young gentleman got up and placed the candles upon the floor, that the light might be thrown on his face as from the lamps in the theatre. Gar- rick, displeased at his officiousness, immediately sat down again. My friend Maltby''' and I, when we were very young men, had a strong desire to see Dr. Johnson ; and we determined to call upon him and introduce ourselves. We accordingly proceeded to his house in Bolt Court ; and I had my hand on the knocker, when our courage failed us, and we retreated. Many years afterwards, I mentioned this circumstance to * See notice at the commencement of the Porsoniana in this vol. — Ed. 10 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE Boswell, who said, " What a pity that you did not go boldly in ! he would have received you with all kindness." Dr. Johnson said to an acquaintance of mine, " My other works are wane and water ; but my Rambler is pure wine." The world now thinks differently. Lady Spencer recollected Johnson well, as she used to see him often in her girlhood. Her mother. Lady Lucan, would say, " Nobody dines with us to- day ; therefore, child, we'll go and get Dr. Johnson." So they would drive to Bolt Court, and bring the doctor home wdth them. At the sale of Dr. Johnson's books, I met Gene- ral Oglethorpe, then very, very old, the flesh of his face looking like parchment. He amused us young- sters by talking of the alterations that had been made in London and of the great additions it had received w'ithin his recollection. He said that he had shot snipes in Conduit Street ! By the by. General Fitzpatrick remembered the time when St. James's Street used to be crowded wdth the carriages of the ladies and gentlemen who TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL KOGERS. 11 were walking in the Mall, — the ladies with their heads in full dress, and the gentlemen carrying their hats under their arms. The proprietors of Eanelagh and Vauxhall used to send decoy-ducks among them, that is, persons attired in the height of fashion, who every now and then would exclaim in a very audible tone, " What charming weather for Eanelagh " or " for Vauxhall ! " Eanelagh was a very pleasing place of amuse- ment. There persons of inferior rank mingled with the highest nobility of Britain. All was so orderly and still, that you could hear the u-ldshiug sound of the ladies' trains, as the immense assembly walked round and round the room. If you chose, you might have tea, which was served up in the neatest equipage possible. The price of admission was half-a-crown. People generally went to Eanelagh between nine and ten o'clock. My first attempt at authorship was a series of papers headed The Scribbler/'- which appeared in * T/te Scrihhler extends to eig:lit numbers, — in The Gentleman^ s Magazine for 1781, pp. 68, 119, 168, 218, 259, 306, 355, 405 (mis- 12 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE The Gentleman's Magazine, — for what year I forget, I have never looked at them since : I dare say they are sad trash. [" THE SCBIBBLEK. NO. IV. "0 Tcmpora! Mores'. " The degeneracy of the age has ever been the favourite theme of declamation : yet, when the sub- ject has been attentively examined, the Moderns will not appear inferior to the Ancients. ' ' Greece and Kome shine with peculiar lustre in the page of history. The former contained several states, the principal of which were Lacedsemon and Athens. " Devoted entirely to war, the Spartans were brave, frugal, and temperate ; but divested of every sentiment of humanity. The reduction of Athens and the capture of Cadmea, the execution of Agis and the barbarity exercised on the Helotes, reflect indelible disgrace on the annals of Lacedaemon. paged 409), (several of the references to wliicli in Tlic General Index to that work are wrong). The first Number is signed u g****» jj^*««*«_'> Tiiege juvenile essays are on various subjects, and quite up to the standard of the periodical writing of the time. I have given, as a curiosity, No. 4 entire, — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 13 "With a delicate taste and a fine imagination, the Athenians were vain, inconstant, and irresokite. If no nation ever produced more great men, no nation ever behaved to them with such ingratitude. Miltiades died in prison ; Aristides, Themistocles, and Cimon, were banished ; Socrates and Phocion were condemned to suffer death. The rest of Greece does not present a scene more honourable to human nature. " Individuals appeared among the Eomans who merit the highest encomiums. Their national cha- racter, however, was haughty and oppressive. The destruction of Carthage and Numantia, the murder of the Gracchi, their injustice to the Aricians and the Ardeates, their triumphs and their gladiatorial com- bats, sully the glory they acquired from their patriot- ism, moderation, and valour. ' ' Such were the Ancients ; while they cultivated the severer, they neglected the milder virtues ; and were more ambitious of exciting the admiration than of deserving the esteem of posterity. " Examples of heroic virtue cannot occur so fre- quently among the Moderns as the Ancients, from the nature of their political institutions ; yet Eng- 14 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE land, Holland, and Switzerland, are entitled to greater applause than the celebrated republics of antiquity. " Generosity, sincerity, and a love of indepen- dence, are the characteristics of the English. No nation had ever juster ideas of liberty, or fixed it on a firmer basis. They have concerted innumerable establishments in favour of the indigent, and have even frequently raised subscriptions for the relief of their enemies, when reduced to captivity. Their conduct indeed in India has been excessively unjust. Nor can this appear surprising to those who reflect, that India is under the direction of a commercial society, conducted by its members in a distant country ; and that its climate is fatal to the consti- tutions of the Europeans, who visit it only with the design of suddenly amassing wealth, and are anxious to return as soon as that design is accomplished. " Holland, however circumscribed in its extent, has acquired liberty by a war of above half a cen- tury, and risen to the highest rank among the powers of Europe. Though the Dutch are universally en- gaged in lucrative pursuits, neither their sentiments are contracted, nor their ideas confined. They have TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL KOGEES. 15 erected edifices in which age may repose, and sickness be reheved ; and have often Hberally contributed to the support of the persecuted. The destruction of the De "Witts was entirely the result of a mo- mentary passion. " Sheltered within the fastnesses of their native mountains, the Swiss look down with security on the revalutions around them. Though never actuated with the spirit of conquest, they have exhibited acts of the most exalted heroism in defence of their country. Industrious, yet liberal ; simple, yet en- lightened ; their taste is not vitiated, nor their man- ners corrupted, by the refinements of luxury. "That the Moderns are not inferior to the An- cients in virtue, is obvious therefore on a review of the nations that have acted with most honour in the grand theatre of the world. The present mode of conducting war, not to mention any other instance, is the most humane and judicious that has yet been adopted. " Let us not then depreciate the Moderns. Let us admire, let us imitate, what is laudable in anti- quity, but be just to the merits of our contem- poraries."] 16 EECOLLECTIOXS OF THE The first poetry I published was the Ode to Super- stition, in 1786. I wrote it while I was in my teens, and afterwards touched it up." I paid down to the * According to a note in Mr. E.'s collected poems it was "written in 1785." — The full title of this publication is An Ode to Sujjerstition, ovitli some otlier Poems. The small pieces an- nexed to the Ode are, lines " To a Lady on the Death of her Lover," "The Sailor," "A Sketch of the Alps at Day-break," and "A Wish." The first of these Mr. Eogers thought unworthy of preservation : but it may be subjoined here : — " To a Lady on tlw Death of her Lover. " Hail, pensive, pleasing Melancholy, hail ! Descend, and woo, with me, the silent shade ; The curfew swings its sound along the gale. And the soft moonlight sleeps in every glade. She comes, she comes ! through **'s dusky grove, In mild Eliza's form, I see her come ! Mourning with all the widow's vows of love Her Henry's summons to his long, long home. But hark ! from you bright cloud a voice she hears ! ' No more, fond maid, from social pleasures fly : ' I'm sent from heaven to smile away thy tears, * For Henry shares the triumphs of the sky. ' He's gone before but to prepare for thee ; • And when thy soul shall wing its willing flight, ' His kindred soul, from all its fetters free, ' Will spring to meet thee in the realms of light. ' Know, ye shall then, with mutual wonder, trace ' Each little twinkling star in yon blue sphere, ' Explore what modes of being people space, ' And visit worlds whose laws he taught thee here. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 17 publisher thirty pounds to insure him from being a loser by it. At the end of four years, I found that he had sold about twenty copies. However, I was consoled by reading in a critique on the Ode that I was " an able writer," or some such expression. — The short copy of verses entitled Cai)tivity was also com- posed w^hen I was a very young man. It was a favourite with Hookham Frere, who said that it re- sembled a Greek epigram. My lines To the Gnat, which some of the re- viewers laughed at, were composed in consequence of my sufferings from the attacks of that insect while I lived at Newington Green. My eyes used to be absolutely swollen up with gnat-bites. I aw'oke one morning in that condition when I was engaged ' Go, act an angel's part, be misery's friend ; ' Go, and an angel's feelings shalt thou gain. ' Each grateful spirit o'er thy couch shall bend, ' And whisper peace, when flattery's voice is vain. ' Wake from thy trance. Can virtue sink in sighs ? * When darkness frowns, she looks beyond the tomb. ' Memory and Hope, like evening stars, arise, * And shed their mingled rays to gild the gloom. ' Religion speaks. She bids thy sorrows cease : ' With gratitude enjoy what God has given. ' Religion speaks. She points the path to peace : ' Attend her call to happiness and heaven.' " 2 18 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE to spend the day at Streatham with Mr. and Mrs. Piozzi, to meet Miss Farren (afterwards Lady Derby); and it was only by the appHcation of laudanum to my wounds that I was enabled to keep my engage- ment. Nothing could exceed the elegance and re- finement of Miss Farren's appearance and manners. People have taken the trouble to write my Life more than once ; and strange assertions they have made both about myself and my works. In one biographical account it is stated that I submitted Tlic Pleasures of Memory in manuscript to the cri- tical revision of Kichard Sharp : now, when that poem was first published, I had not yet formed an acquaintance with Sharp (who was introduced to me by the oldest of my friends, Maltby*). The beautiful lines, " Pleasures of Memory ! — oh, su- premely blest," &c., which I have inserted in a note on Part Second, were composed by a Mr. Soame,f who died in India in 1803, at which time he was a lieutenant in the dragoons. I believe that he de- stroyed himself. I had heard that the lines were in a certain newspaper, and went to Peel's Coffee * See notice at the commenceiueiit of the Porsoniana in this vol.— Ed. t See The CorresiJonclcnce of Sir T. Ilanmcr, &c., p. 481. — Er>. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 19 house to see that paper : there I first read them, and there I transcribed them. On the pubhcation of Tlic Pleasures of Memory, I sent a copy to Mason, who never acknowledged it. I learned, however, from Gilpin, and to my great satisfaction, that Mason, in a letter to him, had spoken well of it ; — he pronomiced it to be very different in style from the poetry of the day. During my whole life I have borne in mind the speech of a woman to Philip of Macedon ; "I appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober." After waiting any thing in the excitement of the moment, and being greatly pleased with it, I have always put it by for a day or two ; and then carefully considering it in every possible light, I have altered it to the best of my judgment ; thus appealing from myself drunk to myself sober. I was engaged on The Pleasures of Memory for nine years ; on Human Life for nearly the same space of time ; and Italy was not completed in less than sixteen years." * 1 was with Mr. Rogers when he tore to pieces, and threw into the fire, a manuscript operatic drama, The Vintage of Burgundy, which he had wiitten early in life. He told me that he offered it to a manager, who said, " I will bring it on the stage, if you are determined to have it acted ; hut it will certainly be damned." — Ed. 20 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE I was present \Yhen Sir Joshua Eeynolds delivered his last lecture at the Eoyal Academy. On entering the room, I found that a semicircle of chairs, im- mediately in front of the pulpit, was reserved for persons of distinction, being labelled " Mr. Burke," " Mr. Boswell," &c. &c. ; and I, with other young men, was forced to station myself a good way off. During the lecture, a great crash w^as heard ; and the company, fearing that the building was about to come down, rushed towards the door. Presently, however, it appeared that there was no cause for alarm ;-'= and they endeavoured to resume their places ; but, in consequence of the confusion, the reserved seats were now occupied by those who could first get into them ; and I, pressing forwards, secured one of them. Sir Joshua concluded the lecture by say- ing, with great emotion, "And I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Aca- demy and from this place might be the name of — Michael Angelo." As he descended from the ros- * There n-as cause for nlarm. " Oa an examination of the floor afterwards, it was found that one of the beams for its support had actually given way from the great weight of the assembly of per- sons who pressed upon it, and probably from a flaw also in the wood.'^ Northcote's Ll/e of Reynolds, ii. 263, ed. 1819.— Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL KOGEES. 21 trum, Burke went up to liim, took his hand, and said, "The Angel ended, and in Adam's ear So charming left his voice, that he a while Thought him still speaking, still stood fix'd to hear.'"* What a quantity of snuff Sir Joshua took ! I once saw him at an Academy-dinner, w^hen his waist- coat was absolutely powdered with it. Sir Joshua was always thinking of his art. He w^as one day walking with Dr. Lawrence near Bea- consfield, when they met a beautiful little peasant- boy. Sir Joshua, after looking earnestly at the child, exclaimed, " I must go home and deepen the colour- ing of my Infant Hercules." The boy was a good deal sun-burnt. Count d'Adhemar was the original purchaser of Sir Joshua's Muscijmla. Sir Joshua, who fancied that he was bargaining for a different and less im- portant pictm'e, told him that the price was fifty guineas ; and on discovering the mistake, allowed him to have Muscipula for that sum. — Fox had been anxious to possess Musciimla when it was first' * Par, Lost, b. viii. 1.— Ed. KECOLLECTIONS OF THE painted ; and he bought it at the Ambassador's sale for (I beheve) fifty guineas. It is now at St. Anne's Hill. It would fetch, at the present day, a thousand guineas. The morning of the day on which Sir Joshua's Puck was to be sold, Lord Farnborough and Dance the painter breakfasted with me; and we went to the sale together. "When Puck was put up, it excited such admiration, that there was a general clapping of hands : yet it was knocked down to me at a compa- ratively trifling price."'' I walked home from the sale, a man carrying Puck before me ; and so well was the picture known, that more than one person, as they passed us in the street, called out, " There it is!" * " When the Shakespeare Gallery was disposed of by lottery, the building itself, and many of the capital pictures, formed the principal prize, which was won by Mr. Tassie of Leicester Square, who, after showing it a few months, divided the property into seve- ral lots, and sold them by auction. In that sale the pictures of Sir Joshua produced the following sums, which are here contrasted with the prices paid to Sir Joshua by Mr. Boydell : Prices paid to Sir Joshua by Prices for which they sold by Mr. Boydell. auction. * * * * * * * * * * * * Puck or Eobin Good Fellow, 100 guineas. £215 5.?. 0." Edward's Anecdotes of Painters, &c. p. 204. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS, 23 I like Northcote's Life of Sir Joshua :'■'■'' it may be depended upon for facts ; and, of course, North- cote was a very competent critic in painting. I can hardly believe what was told me long ago by a gentleman living in the Temple, who, however, assured me that it was fact. He happened to be passing by Sir Joshua's house in Leicester Square, when he saw a poor girl seated on the steps and cry- ing bitterly. He asked what was the matter ; and she replied that she was crying "because the one shilling which she had received from Sir Joshua for sitting to him as a model, had proved to be a bad one, and he would not give her another." I recollect when it was still the fashion for gentle- men to wear swords. I have seen Haydn play at a concert in a tie-wig, with a sword at his side. The head-dresses of the ladies, during my youth, * " Northcote assured the writer of these pages that Laird, not himself, procured the greater part of the materials for the Life of Sir Joshua, and put them together ; his owa part was small, and confined chiefly to criticism on art and artists." Prior's Life of Goldsmith, vol. ii. 572. — Ed. 24 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE were of a truly preposterous size. I have gone to Eanelagh in a coach with a lady who was obliged to sit upon a stool placed ni the bottom of the coach, the height of her head-dress not allowing her to occupy the regular seat. Their tight lacing was equally absurd. Lady Crewe told me, that, on returning home from Eane- lagh, she has rushed up to her bedroom, and desired her maid to cut her laces without a moment's delay, for fear she should faint. Doctor Fordyce sometimes drank a good deal at dinner. He was summoned one evening to see a lady patient, when he was more than half-seas-over, and conscious that he was so. Feeling her pulse, and findmg himself unable to count its beats, he muttered, "Drunk, by God!" Next morning, re- collecting the circumstance, he was greatly vexed : and just as he was thinking what explanation of his behaviour he should offer to the lady, a letter from her was put into his hand. " She too well knew," said the letter, "that he had discovered the unfor- tunate condition in which she was when he last TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 25 visited her ; and she entreated him to keep the mat- ter secret in consideration of the enclosed (a hmidi-ed- pound bank-note) . ' ' I have several times talked to a very aged boat- man on the Thames, who recollected " Mr. Alex- ander Pope." This boatman, when a lad, had fre- quently assisted his father in rowing Pope up and down the river. On such occasions Pope generally sat in a sedan-chair. When I first began to publish, I got acquainted with an elderly person named Lawless,'" shopman of Messrs. Cadell and Davies the booksellers. Lawless told me, that he was once walking through Twicken- ham, accompanied by a friend, and a little boy the son of that friend. On the approach of a very dimi- nutive, misshapen, and shabbily-dressed person, the ■* This Lawless (as I was informed by Mr. Maltby,— see notice prefixed to the Pursoniana, in this vol.) used daily to eat bis dinner in the shop, placing a large folio before him so as to conceal his plate. Often, to his great annoyance, just as he was beginning his meal, Gibbon would drop in, and ask a variety of questions about books. One day, Lawless, out of all patience at the interruption, exclaimed from behind the folio, " Mr, Gibbon, I'm at dinner, and can't answer any questions till I have finished it." — Ed. 26 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE child drew back half-afraid. "Don't be alarmed," said Lawless; "it is only a poor man."— " A poor man ! " cried his friend : " why, that is Mr. Alexan- der Pope." Lawless also told me that he had been intimate wuth the waiting-maid of Pope's beloved Martha Blomit. According to the maid's account, her mis- tress was one of the best-natm^ed and kindest per- sons possible : she would take her out in the car- riage to see sights, &c. &c. Long ago, when Pope's villa was for sale, I had a great wish to buy it ; but I apprehended that it w^ould fetch a much larger sum than it did ; and moreover I dreaded the epigrams, &c., which would certainly have been levelled at me, if it had become mine. — The other day, when the villa was finally dismantled, I was anxious that the obelisk erected by Pope to his mother's memory should be placed in the gardens at Hampton Court, and I offered to contribute my mite for that purpose : — but, no ! — and the obelisk is now at Gopsall, Lord Howe's seat in Leicestershire. There are at Lord Bathurst's a good many un- published letters of Pope, Bolingbroke, &c., which I TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 27 have turned over. In one of them BoHngbroke says that he has no desire to " wrestle with a chimney- sweeper," that is, Warbm-ton. — Lady Bathm'st pro- mised to send me some of Pope's letters : instead of which, she sent me a packet of letters from Queen Mary to King William, in which he is addressed as her " dear husba^i."" In Pope's noble lines To tlic Earl of Oxford, prefixed to Parnell's Poems, there is an impropriety which was forced upon the poet by the rhyme ; " The Muse attends thee to thy silent shade : She waits, or to the scaffold or the cell. When the last lingering friend has bid farewell." It should be, of course, " or to the cell or the scaf- fold." * " Lord Bathurst has lent me a ver}' entertaining collection of original letters, from Pope, BoHngbroke, Swift, Queen Mary, &c., and has promised to make me a present of any thing I like out of them. 1 cannot say these communications have given me a very great idea of Queen Mary's head ; but her heart, I am persuaded, was a very good one. The defect must have been in her educa- tion ; for such spelling and such English 1 never saw ; romantic and childish too, as to sentiment. My reverence for her many virtues leads me to hope she was very young when she wrote them." Letter of Hannah More, in her Memoirs, &c. vol. i. 358, third ed.— Ed. 28 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE Pope has sometimes a beautiful line rhyming to a very indifferent one. For instance, in the Epistle to Jervas, " Alas, how little from the grave we claim ! Thou but preserv'st a face, and I a name : " the latter line is very good: in the former, "claim" is forced and bad ; it should have been " save " or " preserve." Again, in the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, " A heap of dust alone remains of thee ; 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be," the former line is touching, the latter bad. What a charming line is that in TJie Bapa of the Lock ! "If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face ^ and yotCllforyet them alV^ These verses in his Lnitation of the Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace (verses which Lord Holland is so fond of hearing me repeat) are as good as any in Horace himself ; , " Years following years, steal something every day, At last they steal us from ourselves away ; TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 2'J In one our frolics, one amusements end, In one a mistress drops, in one a friend." But perhaps the best hue Pope ever wrote is in his Imitation of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace ; " Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star." The want of pauses is the main blemish in Pope's versification : I can't recollect at this moment an}' pause he has, except that in his fine Prologue to Cato ; " The triumph ccas'cl ; tears gush'd from every eye ; The -svorld's great victor pass'd unheeded by." People are now so fond of tiie obscure in poetrj-, that they can perceive no dccj) thinkiufj in that dar- ling man Pope, because he always expresses himself with such admirable clearness. My father used to recommend Pope's Homer to me : but, with all my love of Pope, I never could like it, (I dehght in Cowper's Homer ; I have read it again and again.*) * Thomas Campbell once told me how greatly he admired Cowper's Homer : he said that he used to read it to his wife, who •was moved even to tears by some passages of it. — Ed. 30 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE The article on Pope in The Quarterly Bcvieiu'''- was certainly touched up by Gifford : in some places it is beyond the powers of D'Israeli. Pope is not to be compared to Dryden for varied harmony of versification ; nor for ease ; — how natur- ally the words follow each other in this couplet of Dryden's in the Second Part of Absalom and Achi- tophcl ! " The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull, With this prophetic blessing — Be thou dull! " and in that touching one in his Ejnstle to Congreve, " Be kind to my remains ; and, O, defend, Against your judgment, your departed friend ! " Dryden's Virgil is, on the whole, a failure ; but I am not sure that it does not exhibit the best speci- mens of his versification : in that w'ork he had not to tax his invention ; he had only to think of the ex- pression and versification. It contains one thing, in the supplication of Turnus to iEneas, which is finer than the original ; * Vu]. xxiii. 4C0.— Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 31 " Yet think, O, think, if mercy may be shown, — Thou hadst a father once, and hast a son, — Pity my sire," &c. Virgil's words are : " Miseri te si qua parentis Tangere cura potest, oro, — fuit et tibi talis Anchises genitor, — Dauni miserere senectse," kc^- I sometimes wonderi how a man can ever be cheerful, when he knows that he must die. But what poets write about the horrors of the grave makes not the slightest impression upon me ; for instance, what Dryden says ; " Vain men ! how vanishing a bliss we crave ! Now warm in love, now withering iu the grave ! Never, O, never more, to see the sun. Still dark, in a damp vault, and still alone ! " % * yEn. xii. 932.— Ed. f Mr. Rogers once made the same remark to Mr. Luttrell, who versified it as follows, " death, thy certainty is such And thou'rt a thing so fearful, That, musing, I have wonder'd much How men were ever cheerful." — Ed. X Palamon and Arcite, b. iii. — Ed. 32 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE All this is unphilosophical ; in fact, nonsense. The body, ^Yhen the sonl has left it, is as worthless as an old garment, — rather more so, for it rots much sooner. — The lines of Dryden which I have just quoted (and which are modernised from Chaucer) were great favourites with Sheridan ; I seem now to hear him reciting them. Sir George Beaumont once met Quin at a very small dinner-party. There was a delicious pudding, which the master of the house, pushing the dish to- wards Quin, begged him to taste. A gentleman had just before helped himself to an immense piece of it. " Pray," said Quin, looking first at the gentle- man's plate and then at the dish, " which is the pud- ding? " Sir George Beaumont, when a young man, was one day in the Mount (a famous coffee-house in Mount Street, Grosvenor Square) with Harvey Aston. Various persons were seated at different tables. Among others present, there was an Irish- man who was very celebrated as a duellist, having killed at least half-a-dozen antagonists. Aston, TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. S?> talking to some of his acquaintance, swore that he would make the duellist stand barefooted before them. " You had better take care what you sa}'," they replied ; "he has his eye upon you." — " No mat- ter," rejoined Aston ; " I declare again that he shall stand barefooted before you, if you will make up among you a purse of fifty guineas." They did so. Aston then said in a loud voice, " I have been in Ire- land, and am well acquainted with the natives." The Irishman was all ear. Aston went on, " The Irish, being born in bogs, are every one of them web- footed; I know it for a fact." — "Sir," roared the duellist, starting up from his table, "it is false!" Aston persisted in his assertion. " Sir," cried the other, " J was born in Ireland; and I will prove to you that it is a falsehood." So saying, in great haste he pulled off his shoes and stockings, and displayed his bare feet. The joke ended in Aston's sharing the purse between the Irishman and himself, gi\ang the former thirty guineas, and keeping twenty. Sir George assured me that this was a true story." * A similar story is related of the Irishman from whomMack- lin took the idea of Sir Callaghan O'Brallagbau (in Zove a la jMocIc'), Macklin professing his belief that he, like other Irishmen, must have a tail, " he instantly pulled off his coat and waistcoat, 3 S4 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE Aston was always kicking up disturbances. I remember being at Eanelagh with my father and mother, when we heard a great row, and were told that it was occasioned by Aston. If I mistake not, Aston fought two duels in India on two successive days, and fell in the second one." That beautiful view of Conway Castle [in Mr. Eogers's dining-room] was painted by Sir George Beaumont, who presented it to me as a memorial of our having been originally introduced to each other in its ruins.- — Sir George and I w^ere always excellent friends. The morning after I arrived at Venice (on my first visit to Italy), I was looking out at the to convince him of Lis mistake, assuring him, ' that no Irishman, in that rcsjwct, was better than another mau.' " Cooke's Mcniuirs ofJIacJdhi, p. 225.— Ed. * " 1798, Dec. 23. At Madras, in consequence of a wound he received in a duel with Major Allen, of which he languished about a week, Coh Harvey Aston. He had been engaged in a similar affair of honour, and on the same account, with Major Picton, only the day preceding that on which he met Major A., but which was fortunately terminated by each party tiring in the air, and a projier explanation taking place as to the offence." Gentleman's Magazine, vol. Ixix. P. I. p. 527. — Aston had fought a duel in 1790 with Lieut. Fitzgerald, and was severely wounded. See Haydn's Diet, of Dates, sub. DvcUlng. — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 35 window, when I saw a gentleman and a lady land at my lodging from a gondola : they were Sir George and Lady Beaumont. The meeting was delightful : — even now, I think of it with pleasure. In my youthful days Young's Night-Thoughts was a very favourite book, especially with ladies : I knew more than one lady who had a copy of it in which particular passages were marked for her by some popular preacher. Young's poem TJic Last Day contains, amidst much absurdity, several very fine lines : what an enormous thought is this ! — " Those overwlielming armies, wbose command Said to one empire ' Fall,' another ' Stand,' Whose rear hi/j rapt in nUjlit^ tvliile hrcakinfj dawn Ruus'd the broad front, and calVd the hattle on.''''* At Brighton, during my youth, I became ac- quainted with a lawyer who had known Gray. He * Book ii.— Ed. 36 EECOLLECTIOXS OF THE said that Gray's pronunciation was very affected, e.g. " What naise (noise) is that ? " Henley (the translator of Beckford's VatheJc) was one morning paying a visit to Gray, when a dog came into the room. "Is that yom- dog?" said Henley. "No," replied Gray: "do you suppose that I would keep an animal hjj wldch I might iios- sihly lose my life." I was a mere lad when Mason's Gray was pub- lished. I read it in my young days with delight, and have done so ever since : the Letters have for me an inexpressible charm ; they are as Vv^itty as Walpole's, and have, what his want, true wisdom. I used to take a pocket edition of Gray's Poems with me every morning during my walks to town to my father's banking-house, where I was a clerk, and read them by the Vv'ay. I can repeat them all. I do envy Gray these lines in his Ode on a dis- tant inospect of Eton College ; " Still as they ruu, they look behhid, They hear a voice iu every wiud. And snatch a fearful joy .''^ But what immediately follows is not good ; TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 37 " Gay hope is theirs, by Fancy fed, Less pleasing when possessed : " we cannot be said to i^ossess liope."'^ — How strange it is that, with all Gray's care in composition, the word "shade" should occur three times in the course of the eleven first lines of that ode ! — " Her Henry's holy shade.'''' " Whose turf, whose shade, -whose flowers among." " Ah happy hills, ah pleasing shade! " Both Fox and Courtenay thought Gray's frag- ment. The Alliance of Education and Government, his finest poem : but that was because they preferred the heroic couplet to every other kind of verse. A celebrated passage in it, — " Oft o'er the trembling nations from afar Has Scythia breath'd the living cloud of war ; And, where the deluge burst with sweepy sway, Their arms, their kings, their gods were roll'd away. As oft have issu'd, host impelling host, The blue-ey'd myriads from the Baltic coast : * His friend Wakefield had anticipated Mr. Rogers in the above remark : " Though the ohjcct of liope may truly be said to be less pleasing in possession than in the fancy ; yet HOPE in 2>erson cannot possibly be possessed," have shed tears over it, after I was seventy, — not so much at its pathos as at its generous senti- ments. The Abbe Dehlle (whom I knew well and liked much) was of opinion that Marivaux's Paysan Par- vemc was a greater literary effort than Marianne. I once said to Delille, " Don't you think that Voltaire's vers da socicte are the first of their kind? " He replied, "Assuredly; the very first, and — the last." Dr. Parr had a great deal of sensibility. When I read to him, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the account of O'Coigly's" death, the tears rolled down his cheeks. One day. Mackintosh having vexed him by call- ing O'Coigly "a rascal," Parr immediately rejoined, " Yes, Jamie, he was a bad man, but he might have * James O'Coigly (alias James Quigley, alias James Johu Fivey) was tried for high treason at Maidstone, and hanged on Penningdon Heath, 7th June, 1798. When he had hung about ten minutes, he was beheaded ; and the head and body were imme- diately buried under the gallows (the rest of his sentence, — that, " while he was yet alive, his bowels should be taken out and burnt before his face, &c., laving been remitted). — Ed. 4 50 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE been worse ; he was an Irishman, but he might have been a Scotchman ; he was a priest, but he might have been a lawyer ; he was a repubhcan, but he might have been an apostate." After then- quarrel (about Gerald), Parr often spoke with much bitterness of Mackintosh : among other severe things, he said that "Mackintosh came up from Scotland with a metaphysical head, a cold heart, and open hands." At last they were recon- ciled, having met, for that purpose, in my house : but their old familiarity was never fully re-estab- lished. Parr was frequently very tiresome in conversa- tion, talking like a schoolmaster. He had a horror of the east wind ; and Tom Sheridan "once kept him prisoner in the house for a fortnight by fixing the weathercock in that direc- tion. We have not a few charming prose-writers in what may be called the middle style, — Addison, Middleton, Jortin, &c. ; but in the highest prose- style we have none to be compared with Bossuet, TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 51 Pascal, or Buffon. — We have far better tragic writers than Corneille or Eacine ; but we have no one to be compared with Mohere, — no one like him. Swift's verses on his own death have an exquisite facihty : but we are not to suppose that he wrote them off-hand ; their ease is the result of very careful composition. Helen Maria Williams was a very fascinating person ; but not handsome. I knew her intimately in her youth, w^hen she resided in London with her mother and sisters. They used to give very agreeable evening-parties, at which I have met many of the Scotch literati, Lord Monboddo, &c. Late in life, Helen translated into English, and very beautiful English too, Humboldt's long work, Personal Narrative of Travels, &c. ; and, I believe, nearly the whole impression still lies in Longman's warehouse. When she was in Paris, during the Kevolution, she has seep men and women, who were waiting for admission at the door of the theatre, suddenly leave their station on the passing of a set of wretches going to be guillotined, and then, after having ascer- 52 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE tained that none of their rehitions or friends were' among them, very unconcernedly return to tlie door of the theatre. — I have frequently dined with her at Paris, when Kosciusko and other celehrated persons were of the party. When Lord Erskine heard that somebody had died worth two hundred thousand pounds, he ob- served, " Well, that's a very pretty sum to begin the next world with." " A friend of mine," said Erskine, " was suffering from a continual wakefulness ; and various methods were tried to send him to sleep, but in vain. At last his physicians resorted to an experiment which suc- ceedly perfectly : they dressed him in a watchman's coat, put a lantern into his hand, placed him in a sentry-box, and — he was asleep in ten minutes." To all letters soliciting his "subscription" to any thing, Erskine had a regular form of reply, viz. " Sir, I feel much honoured by your application to me, and I beg to subscribe " — here the reader had to turnover the leaf — "myself your very ob' servant," &c. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 53 I wish I could recollect all the anecdotes of his early life which Erskine used to relate with such spirit and dramatic effect. He had been in the navy ; and he said that he once managed to run a vessel between two rocks, where it seemed almost impos- sible that she could have been driven. He had also been in the army ; and on one occasion saved the life of a soldier who was condemned to death, by making an earnest appeal in his behalf to the general in command and his wife : Erskine having got the pardon, rode off with it at full speed to the place of execution, where he arrived just as the soldier was kneeling, and the muskets were levelled for the fatal shot. Erskine used to say that when the hour came that all secrets should be revealed, we should know the reason why — shoes are always made too tight. When he had a house at Hampstead, he enter- tained the very best company. I have dined there with the Prince of Wales, — the only time I ever had any conversation with his royal highness. On that occasion the Prince was very agreeable and familiar. Among other anecdotes which he told us of Lord Thurlow, I remember these two. The first was : 54 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE Thurlow once said to the Prince, " Sir, your father will continue to be a popular king as long as he continues to go to church every Sunday, and to be faithful to that ugly woman, your mother ; but you, sir, will never be popular," The other w^as this : While his servants were carrying Thurlow up stairs to his bed-room, just before his death, they happened to let his legs strike against the bannisters, upon which he uttered the last words he ever spohe, — a frightful imprecation on " all their souls." Erskine said that the Prince of Wales was quite " a cosmogony man " (alluding to Tlie Vicar of Wake- field), for he had only two classical quotations, — one from Homer and one from Virgil, — which he never failed to sport when there was any opportunity of introducing them.''' Latterly Erskine was very poor ; and no wonder ,^ for he always contrived to sell out of the funds w4ien they were very low, and to buy in when they were very high. "By heaven," he would say, "I am * Mr. Luttrell, who was preseut when Mr. Rogers told this anecdote, added, — " Yes, and the quotation from Virgil was always given with a ridiculous error, ' Non illi imperium pelago, SEevumque tridentem,' " c&c. ul^n. i. 138. — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL EOGERS. 55 a perfect kite, all paper; the boys might fly me." Yet, poor as he was, he still kept the best society : I have met him at the Duke of York's, &c., &c. I asked Erskine if he really was the author of two little poems attributed to him, — The Geranium aud The Birth of the Rose. He replied that The Geranium was written by him ; that the other was not his. Here's an epigram by Erskine which is far from bad (I know not if it has ever been printed) ; "The French have taste in all they do, AVhich we are quite without ; For Nature, that to them gave Qoiit^ To us gave only gout." Thomas Grenville" told me this curious fact. When he was a young man, he one day dined with Lord Spencer at Wimbledon. Among the company was George Pitt (afterwards Lord Kivers), who de- * The Right Hon. T. G. — Sometimes, towards the close of his life, from lapse of memory, Mr. Rogers, in relating this anec- dote, would state that he himself had been of the party at Lord Spencer's. — Ed. 56 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE clared that he could tame the most furious animal by looking at it steadily. Lord Spencer said, " Well, there is a mastiff in the court-yard here, which is the terror of the neighbourhood ; will you try your powers on him?" Pitt agreed to do so; and the company descended into the court-yard. A servant held the mastiff by a chain, Pitt knelt down at a short distance from the animal, and stared him sternly in the face. They all shuddered. At a signal given, the mastiff was let loose, and rushed furiously towards Pitt, — then suddenly checked his pace, seem confounded, and, leaping over Pitt's head, ran away, and was not seen for many hours after. During one of my visits to Italy, while I was walking, a little before my carriage, on the road, not far from Vicenza, I perceived two huge dogs, nearly as tall as myself, bounding towards me (from out a gate-way, though there was no house in sight). I recollected what Pitt had done ; and trembling from head to foot, I yet had resolution enough to stand quite still and eye them with a fixed look. They gradually relaxed their speed from a gallop TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL EOGEES. 57 to a trot, came up to me, stopped for a moment, and then went back again. Dunning (afterwards Lord Ashburtou) was " stat- ing the law " to a jury at Guildhall, when Lord Mansfield interrupted him by saying, " If that be law, I'll go home and burn my books." — " My Lord," replied Dunning, " you had better go home and read them." Dunning was remarkably ugly. One night, while he was playing whist, at Nando's, with Home Tooke and two others. Lord Thurlow called at the door, and desired the waiter to give a note to Dunning (with whom, though their politics were so different, he was very intimate). The waiter did not know Dunning by sight. " Take the note upstairs," said Thmiow, "and deliver it to the ugliest man at the card-table — to him who most resembles the knave of spades." The note immediately reached its desti- nation. — Home Tooke used often to tell this anec- dote. When I was young, we had (what we have not now) several country-gentlemen of considerable 58 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE literary celebrity, — for instance, Hayley, Sargent (author of The Mine), and Webb. There are some good remarks on painting and on poetry scattered through Webb's different pieces. If Hayley was formerly over-rated, he is now undervalued. He was a most accomplished person, as indeed is evident from the notes to his various poems, — notes which Lord Holland admires greatly.'" His translation of the first Canto of the Infcrno\ is on the whole good ; but he has omitted some of the striking circumstances in the original. When I first came forward as a poet, I was highly gratified by the praise which Hayley bestowed on my writings, and which was communicated to me by Cadell the publisher. I once travelled with Lord Lansdowne (when Lord Henry Petty) to Bognor, in the neighbour- hood of which Hayley was then living (not at * " Lord Holland, the best informed and most elegnnt of our writers on the subject of the Spanish theatre, declared that he had been induced to learn that language bj' what Hayley had written concerning the poet Ercilla." Gary's Life of Hayley. — Lives of Enr/Ush Poets, S,-c., p. 347.— Ed. f In the Notes to his Essay mi Poetry. — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 59 Eartham, but in a village* near it). I went to visit him. The door was opened by a little girl ; and when I said, " Is Mr. Hayley at home? " he himself exclaimed, "Yes, he is" — (he recognized my voice, though we had only met once before, — at Flax- man's) ; and out he came, adding, " I am dehghted to see you : if I had not known your voice, I should not have let you in, for I am very busy." I took coffee with him, and he talked most agreeably, said that Lord Henry Petty was my travelling com- panion, and that he was very anxious to be intro- duced to him : but Hayley, who did not care a straw for rank, could not be prevailed upon to see his lordship. In those days, indeed, praise was sweet to me, even when it came from those who were far inferior to Hayley : what pleasure I felt on being told that Este had said of me, " A child of Goldsmith, sir ! " Parson Este, in conjunction with Captain Top- ham, edited the newspaper called The World. He was reader at Whitehall ; and he read the service so admirably, that Mrs. Siddons used frequently to go to hear him. My sister and I once took him with * Felpham.— Ed. €0 EBCOLLECTIONS OF THE US on a little tour ; and when we were at Eoss, he read to us Pope's lines about " the man of Ross," — I cannot describe how beautifully. Este published a strange book, My oivn Life, and A Journey through Flanders, &c. He used to throw liimself into attitudes in the street. At last he went mad, and died insane. I wish somebody would collect all the Epigrams written by Dr. Mansel (Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Bishop of Bristol) : they are remark- ably neat and clever. When titled ladies become authoresses or com- posers, their friends suffer for it. Lady asked me to buy her book ; and I replied that I would do so when I was rich enough. I went to a concert at Lady — — 's, during which several pieces composed b)y her daughter were performed ; and early next morning, a music-seller arrived at my house, bringing wnth him the daughter's compositions (and a bill re- ceipted), price sixteen shillings. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL EOGERS. Ci Surely, in delicate touches of pathos Homer ex- cels all poets. For instance, how beautiful is Andro- mache's saying, after Hector's death, that Astyanax had lost Ids i^layfclloio ;* and Helen's declaration con- cerning the same hero, that he had never reproached her ! [" Thee lost, he loses all, of father, both, And equal playmate in one day depriv'd." Cowper's Iliad, b. xxii. " Yet never heard I once hard speech from tliee Or taunt morose ; but if it ever chanc'd That male or female of thy father's house Blam'd me, and even if herself the queen (For in the king, whate'er befell, I found Always a father), thou hast interpos'd Thy gentle temper and thy gentle speech To sooth them." Id. b. xxiv.] John Hunter believed that when there was only one daughter and several sons in a family, the daughter was always of a masculine disposition ; and that when a family consisted of several daughters and * But here Mr. Rogers recollecteil only Cowper's version, and misunderstood it. Cowper uses " playmate " iov j'laymates gene- O'alli/, The original is its ■^/J.ap 5' opagc of Gibbon.'' — " Before my departure from Englacd, I was present at tlie august spectacle of Mr. Hastings's trial iu Westminster Hall, It is not my province to absolve or condemn the Governor of India ; but Mr. Sheridan's eloquence demanded my applause ; nor could I hear without emotion the personal compliment which he imid me in the presence of the British nation." Gibbon's Memoirs, Sec. p. 172, ed. 4to. — Ed. f On the campaigns of his Royal Highness, see 3Iemoir of the Duhe of York in The Gentleman's Magazine for January 1827, pp. 71, 2, 3.— Ed. €8 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE Sheridan was dining one day at my house when I produced the versified translation of Aristanetus,"''' saying, " Yoit are guilty of this." He made no reply, but took it, and put it, with a smile, into his pocket (from which, of course, I drew it out). What an odd fancy, to turn Aristaenetus into verse ! Hal- hed, who assisted Sheridan in that translation, pub- lished imitations of Martial, and some of them are very good. I have seen Sheridan in company with the fa- mous Pamela.! She was lovely — quite radiant with beauty ; and Sheridan either was, or pretended to be, violently in love with her. On one occasion I remember that he kept labouring the whole evening at a copy of verses in French, which he intended to present to her, every now and then writing down a * Printed, without the translator's name, in 177J. — Ed. f Madame de Genlis's adojited daughter, who was married at Tournay, in 1792, to Lord Edward Fitzgerald. According to- Madame de Genlis, in her ]\lemolrs, two da3-s before she and Pamela left England, Sheridan declared himself, in her presence, the lover of Pamela, who accepted his hand with j^leasure ; and it was settled that they should be married — " on our return from France, which was expected to take place in a fortnight." See Memoirs of Sheridan, vol. ii. 19G, ed. 1827, by Moore, who suspects, not without good reason, that in this affair Sheridan was only amusing himself. — En. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 69 word or two on a slip of paper with a pencil. The best of it was, that he understood French very im- perfectly. I prefer Sheridan's Bivals to his School for Scan- dal : exquisite humour pleases me more than the finest wit. Sheridan was a great artist : what could be more happy in expression than the last of these lines ? you may see it illustrated in the park every Sunday : — " Hors'd in Cheapside, scarce yet the gayer spark Achieves the Sunday triumph of the Park ; Scarce yet you see him, dreading to be late, Scour the New Road and dash through Grosvenor Gate ; Anxious — yet timorous too— his steed to show, The hack Bucephalus of Rotten Row. Careless he seems, yet, vigilantly sly, Woos the stray glance of ladies passing by, While his off-heel, insidiously aside. Provokes the caper which he seems to chide.^^'^ I regret that Moore should have printed those memoranda which prove how painfully Sheridan ela- * Frologiie to Pizzaro (but originally written for, and spoken ■before, Lady Cra.\en's Jliniature Picture). — Ed, 70 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE borated his compositions ; for, though the judicious few will feel that Sheridan was quite right in doing so, the public generally will think the less of him for it. — No wonder that those memoranda were extant : Sheridan was in the habit of putting by, not only all papers written by himself, but all others that came into his hands. Ogle told me that, after his death, he found in his desk sundry unopened letters written by his (Ogle's) mother, who had sent them to Sheri- dan to be franked. Sheridan did not display his admirable powers in company till he had been warmed by wine. During the earlier part of dinner he was generally heavy and silent ; and I have heard him, when invited to drink a glass of wine, reply, " No, thank you ; I'll take — a- little small beer." After dinner, when he had had a- tolerable quantity of wine, he was brilliant indeed. But when he went on swallowing too much, he be- came downright stupid : and I once, after a dinner- party at the house of Edwards, the bookseller in Pall Mall, walked with him to Brookes's, when he had absolutely lost the use of speech. Sheridan, Sir Walter (then Mr.) Scott, and Moore were one day dining with me, and Sheridan was TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL KOGEES. 71 talking in his very best style, when, to my great vexation, Moore (who has that sort of restlessness which never allows him to be happy where he is) suddenly interrupted Sheridan by exclaiming, " Isn't it time to go to Lydia White's ? "* Dming his last illness, the medical attendants apprehending that they would be obliged to perform an operation on him, asked him " if he had ever undergone one." — " Never," rephed Sheridan, " ex- cept when sitting for my picture, or having my hair cut." Sheridan had very fine eyes, and he was not a little vain of them. He said to me on his death- bed, "Tell Lady Besborough that my eyes will look up to the coffin-lid as brightly as ever." * Miss Lydia White (long since dead) was a lady Avho de- lighted in giving parties to as many celebrated people as she could collect. The following instance of her readiness in reply was com- municated to me by my friend the Rev. W. Harness. '• At one of Lydia White's small and most agreeable dinners in Park Street, the company (most of them, except the hostess, being Whigs) were discussing in rather a querulous strain the desperate prospects of their party. ' Yes,' said Sydney Smith, ' we are in a most deplor- able condition : we must do something to help ourselves ; I think we had better sacrifice a Tory virgin.' This was pointedly ad- dressed to Lydia White, who at once catchingand applying the allu- sion to Iphigenia, answered, ' I believe there is nothing the Whigs would not do to raise the ivind' " — Ed. 72 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE Soon after his death, Lord Holland wrote a short biographical sketch of him, in which it is stated that he showed during the closing scene a deep sense of devotion. But, on my asking the Bishop of London, who had been called in to read prayers to him, what were the religious feelings of Sheridan in his last moments, the answer was, " I had no means of know- ing; for, when I read the prayers, he w^as totally insensible ; Mrs. Sheridan raising him up, and joining his hands together."''' In his dealings with the world, Sheridan cer- tainly carried the ]_nivilecjes of genius as far as they were ever carried by man. We used all to read and like Tickell'sf Wreath of * Let us hear, however, what Smyth says on this point in his {]3rivately -printed) Memoir of Mr. Sheridan. " But the Jiext day he [Sheridan] was not better, and I never saw him. I talked about him, while I sat with Mrs. Sheridan ; as much, at least, as I thought she chose. I durst not ask much. She told me she had sent for her friend Dr. Howley, then Bishop of Loudon, who had instantly come up from Oxfordshire to pray by him. 'And Mr. Sheridan,' I ventured to say, ' what of him ? ' 'I never saw,' she replied, ' such awe as there was painted in his countenance — I shall never forget it.' " p. 68. — Ed. f See note, p. 04. — Ed, TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 73 Fashion, and his other pieces, as they came out. I can still repeat several of the songs in his opera, Tlia Carnival of Venice,* though they are only so-so : here is part of one of them ; " Soon as the busy day is o'er, And evening comes with pleasant shade. We gondoliers, from shore to shore, Merrily ply our jovial trade ; And while the moon shines on the stream, And as soft music breathes around, The feathering oar returns the gleam, And dips in concert to the sound. Down by some convent's mouldering walls Oft we bear th' enamour'd youth ; Softly the watchful fair he calls, Who whispers vows of love and truth," &c. It is quite true, as stated in several accounts of him, that Fox, when a very young man, was a pro- digious dandy, — wearing a little odd French hat, shoes with red heels, &c. He and Lord Carlisle * No portion of this opera, except the songs, was ever printed. —Ed. 74 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE once travelled from Paris to Lyons for the express purpose of buying waistcoats ; and during the whole journey they talked about nothing else. Fox (in his earlier days, I mean), Sheridan, Fitz- patrick, &c., led such a life ! Lord Tankerville as- sm'ed me that he has played cards with Fitzpatrick at Brookes' s from ten o'clock at night till near six o'clock the next afternoon, a waiter standing by to tell them " whose deal it was," they being too sleepy to know. After losing large sums at hazard. Fox would go home, — not to destroy himself, as his friends some- times feared, but — to sit down quietly, and read Greek. He once won about eight thousand pounds ; and one of his bond-creditors, who soon heard of his good luck, presented himself, and asked for pay- ment. "Impossible, sir," replied Fox; "I must first discharge my debts of honour." The bond- creditor remonstrated. "Well, sir, give me your bond." It was delivered to Fox, who tore it in pieces and threw them into the fire. " Now, sir," said Fox, "my debt to you is a debt of honour;'* and immediately paid him. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL KOGERS. 75 When I became acquainted with Fox, he had given up that kind of hfe entirely, and resided in the most perfect sobriety and regularity at St. Anne's Hill. There he was very happy, delighting in study, in rural occupations and rural prospects. He would break from a criticism on Person's Euripides to look for the little pigs. I remember his calling out to the Chertsey hills, when a thick mist, which had for some time concealed them, rolled away, " Good morning to you ! I am glad to see you again." There was a walk in his grounds which led to a lane through which the farmers used to pass ; and he would stop them, and talk to them, with great interest, about the price of turnips, &c. I was one day with him in the Louvre, when he suddenly turned from the pictures, and, looking out at the window, exclaimed, " This hot sun will burn up my tm-nips at St. Anne's Hill." In London mixed society Fox conversed little ; but at his own house in the country, with his inti- mate friends, he would talk on for ever, with all the openness and simplicity of a child : he has continued talking to me for half-an-hour after he had taken up his bed-room candle. — I have seen it somewhere 76 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE stated that Fox liked to talk about great people : nothing can be more untrue ; he hardly ever al- luded to them. I remember, indeed, that he once mentioned to me Queen Charlotte, calling her " that bad woman." He was very shy, and disliked being stared at. Windham and I accompanied him one night to Vauxhall, where he was much annoyed at being followed about, as a spectacle, from place to place. On such occasions he was not only shy, but gauche. One morning at his own house, while speaking to me of his travels. Fox could not recollect the name of a particular town in Holland, and was much vexed at the treacherousness of his memory. He had a dinner party that day ; and, just as he had applied the carving-knife to the sirloin, the name of the town having suddenly occurred to him, he roared out exultingly, to the astonishment of the company, ^' Gorcum, Gorcum ! " Fox saw Voltaire at Ferney. Their interview was described to me in a letter by Uvedale Price,* * Created a baronet iu 1828. — A small portion of that letter, about Fox's visit to Voltaire, has been printed in Memorials mid Correspondence of C. J. Fox, edited hj Lord J. Hussell, vol. i. 46. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 77 who went there with him : but unfortunately I no longer possess that letter ; I lent it to Lord Holland, and never could get it back. — An account of the same visit, from the pen of the same writer, occurs in a letter to my unfortunate friend the late E, H. Barker, dated March 24, 1827, from which I shall not scruple to make a long extract : — " But among the characters of the second generation so ably drawn by Mr. Butler [in his Hejnuiiscences'], to me much the most interesting is that of Charles Fox. Our friendship and intimacy, which began at Eton, continued without interruption through life. While Etonians, we acted together in the plays given at Holland House, which, from the high character and connections of itsowner, from the premature talents of C. Fox, two years j'ounger than myself,and from the peculiarly lovely countenance and sweet-toned voice of Lady Sarah Lenox, our Jane Shore (whom, as Gloucester, I could hardly bring myself to speak to as harshly as my character required), these plays had at the time great celebrity. We were at Oxford together, were almost constantly together at Florence, where we studied Italian under the same master at the same time. " From Rome we travelled together along the eastern coast to Venice, and thence to Turin, where we met by appointment our ex- cellent friend and schoolfellow,LordFitzwilliam,who ismentioned by Mr. Butler in a few words, but most impressively, as spoken of him by Fox. All this,! am aware, can have little interest for you : but having the excuse of Mr. Butler's reminiscences, I have in- dulged myself in putting down mine, as they recall a period of great and unmixed delight. I then witnessed daily and hourly that characteristic good nature, that warm and unalterable attachment to his friends of which Mr. B. speaks in so impressive a manner : and likewise witnessed on more than one occasion, what was no less characteristic, his abhorrence of any thing like tyranny, oppres- sion, or cruelty. Having got so far on my journey, I shall e'en proceed with it : from Turin we all three set out for Geneva, but 78 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE It is well known that Fox visited Gibbon at Lau- sanne; and he was much gratified by the visit. Gibbon, he said, talked a great deal, walking up and down the room, and generally ending his sentences with a genitive case ; every now and then, too, cast- ing a look of complacency on his own portrait by Sir Joshua Eeynolds, which hung over the chimney-piece, — that wonderful portrait, m which, while the odd- ness and vulgarity of the features are refined away, the likeness is perfectly preserved. — Fox used to say that Gibbon's History was immortal, because nobody could do without it, — nobody, without vast expense of time and labour, could get elsewhere the informa- went out of our direct road to that most singular and striking place, the Graude Chartreuse, so finely described in Gray's Alcaic Ode. From Geneva Fox and I went to Voltaire at Ferney, having ob- tained a permission then seldom granted. It is an event in one's life to have seen and heard that extraordinary man : he was old and infirm, and, in answer to Fox's note and request, said that the name of Fox was sufficient, and that he could not refuse seeing us, ' mais que noiis venionsjwiir I'exterrer.'' He conversed in a lively manner, Avalkiug with us to and fro in a sort of alley ; and at parting gave us a list of some of his works, adding, ' Ce sont ties livres do qiioi il faut se immir,'' they were such as would fortify our young minds against religious prejudices. Fox quitted us at Geneva, went to England, and commenced his ijolitical career. I went with Fitz- william through the finest parts of Switzerland, and then down the Ehine to Spa, and met him again at Paris : and there ends my foreign journal, and high time it should." — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 79 tion which it contains. — I think, and so Lord Gren- ville thought, that the introductory chapters are the finest part of that history : it was certainly more difficult to write them than the rest of the work. Fox had the highest admiration of Lord North ; he considered him a consmnmate debater. He thought very highly too of Dr. Laurence's speeches ; and said that they only failed in making a deep impres- sion because his manner of delivery was so bad. He disliked Sheridan's famous speeches at Hastings's trial :" yet they fascinated Burke ; and to them Fox attributed the change of style which is visible in Burke's later compositions. He did not greatly ad- mire Burke's celebrated Beflections. Never in my life did I hear anything equal to Fox's speeches in reply, — they were wonderful. — Burke did not do himself justice as a speaker : his manner w^as hurried, and he always seemed to be in a passion.! — Pitt's voice sounded as if he had worsted in his mouth. * In Westminster Hall. — It must be rememberel, however, that the perhaps more famous speech in the House of Commons, 7th Feb. 1787, in which Sheridan brought forward against Hastings the charge relative to the Begum Princesses of Oude, was publicly eulogised by Fox as a matchless piece of eloquence. — Ed. •(• " Burke," said Mr. Maltby (see notice prefixed to the Porso- 80 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE Person said that " Pitt carefully considered his sentences before he uttered them ; but that Pox threw himself into the middle of his, and left it to God Almighty to get him out again."* Malone \yas one day walking down Dover Street with Burke, when the latter all at once drew himself up and carried his head aloft with an air of great hauteur. Malone perceived that this was occasioned by the approach of Fox, who presently passed them on the other side of the street. After Fox had gone by, Burke asked Malone very eagerly, " Did he look at me ? " Fox once said to me that "Burke was a most impracticable person, a most unmanageable colleague — that he never would support any measure, however convinced he might be in his heart of its utility, if it niana in this volume), "always disnppointed me as a speaker. I have heard him, during his speeches in the House, make use of the most vulgar expressions, such as ' three nips of a straw,' ' three skips of a louse,' &c. ; and, on one occasion when I was present, he introduced, as an illustration, a most indelicate storyabout a French king who asked his physician why his natural children were so much finer than his legitimate." — Ed. * Porson was thinking of Sterne. " I begin with writing the first sentence, — and trusting to Almighty God for the second." Tristram SJuindi/, vol. v. 192, ed. 1775. — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL EOGEllS. 81 had been first proposed by another : "* and he once used these very words, " After all, Burke was a damned wrong-headed fellow, through his whole life jealous and obstinate." Mrs. Crewe t told me that, on some occasion, when it was remarked that Fox still retained his early love for France and every thing French, Burke said^ " Yes ; he is like a cat, — he is fond of the house, though the family be gone." I once dined at Mr. Stone's (at Hackney) with Fox, Sheridan, Talleyrand, Madame de Genlis, Pa- mela, and some other celebrated persons of the time. A natural son of Fox, a dumb boy (who was the very image of his father, and who died a few years after, when about the age of fifteen) was also there, having come, for the occasion, from Braidwood's Academy. To him Fox almost entirely confined his attention, conversing with him by the fingers ; and * " Cassius. But what of Cicero ? shall we sonntl him ? I think he will stand very strong with us. » * » * * Brutus. O name him not : let us not break with him ; For he will never follow ainj thing That otlier men begin ." Shakespeare's Julius Ccvsar, act ii. sc. \. — Ed. f Afterwards Lady Crewe. — Ed. 6 82 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE their eyes glistened as they looked at each other. Talleyrand remarked to me, " how strange it was, to dine in company with the first orator in Europe, and only see him talk with his fingers ! " — That day I offended Madame de Genlis by praising the Conies Mormix of Marmontel, with whom she had quarrelled violently. At a dinner-party, where I was, Fox met Aikin. " I am greatly pleased with your Miscellaneous Pieces, Mr. Aikin," said Fox (alludmg to the volume written partly by Aikin, and partly by his sister Mrs. Barbauld). Aikin bowed. "I particularly admire," continued Fox, "your essay Against Inconsistency in our Exijectations ." " That," replied Aikin, " is my sister's." — "I like much," resumed Fox, "your essay On Monastic Institutions." " That," answered Aikin, "is also my sister's." Fox thought it best to say no more about the book. I was present at a dinner-party given by William Smith in Westminster, when Fox would not take the slightest notice of Home Tooke, — would not look at him, nor seem to hear any of the good things he said. It was the most painful scene of the kind I was ever witness to, except what occurred at my TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 83 own house, when the Duke of WelHngton treated Lord Holland much in the same way. At another of Smith's dinners, the conversation turned on Wilberforce ; when somebody put the query, — If Wilberforce were compelled to desert •either the cause of the slaves, or the party of Mr. Pitt, to which would he adhere? " Oh," said Fox, ■■" he would be for Barabbas." But that was said by Fox merely as a joke ; for he greatly respected Pitt ; and I remember that, on another occasion at Smith's, when Tierney, &c., endeavoured to persuade Fox that Pitt was not uttering his real sentiments about the abolition of the slave-trade, he would not be so persuaded.''' — Pitt, too, had the highest respect for Fox. One night, after Fox had been speaking, a noble lord, coming out of the House with Pitt, be- gan to abuse Fox's speech. " Don't disparage it," gaid Pitt ; " nobody could have made it but himself." The Duke of Kichmond, Fox, and Burke, were once conversing about history, philosophy, and poetry. The Duke said, "I prefer reading history to philoso- * " During the debates on the war with France, I heard Fox ■characterise a speech of Pitt as ' one that would have excited the admiration and envy of Demosthenes.' " Mk. Maltby (see note prefixed to the Porsoniana in this volume). — Ed. 84 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE phy or poetry, because history is truths Both Fox and Burke disagreed with him : they thought that poetry was truth, being a representation of human nature : and Fox had some thoughts of writing an essay on the subject. — Lady Glenbervie told me that her father Lord North dishked reading history, be- cause he always doubted its truth/'' In 1792 the Duke of Portland called a meet- ing of the Whigs at Burlington House, to consider the propriety of their supporting the Proclamation against seditious writings and democratical conspi- racies. Francis Duke of Bedford went there. On entering the room, he said to the Duke of Portland, "Is Mr. Fox here?" " No."— " Has he been in- vited?" "No."— "Then," replied the Duke of Bedford, "I must wish you all good mornmg;" and immediately withdrew.! The Duke of Bedford was * " Thinking to amuse my father once, after his retirement from the ministr)', I offered to read a book of historj'. ' Any thing hnt history,' said he ; 'for history must be false.' " Walpollana,. voh i. CO.— Ed. f Many years after I had written down this anecdote, Mr.Eogers remarked to me " how poorly " it is told in Lord Holland's llemoirs of the Whiff Parti/, i. 16 (1852) : "The Dukeof Bedford,on hearing that Mr. Fox was not likely to come, drily observed, ' Then I am sure I have nothing to do heie,' and left the room." — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 85 stanch to his principles till the hour of his death ; and we owe him much. Fox used to declare of himself that he was "a most painstaking person." When he came into office, finding that his handwriting was very bad, he took lessons to improve it. He one day pronounced hmiself to be a bad carver, and, wdien Mrs. Fox confirmed it, he said, " Yes, my dear, I thought you'd agree with me." I saw Lunardi make the first ascent in a balloon which had been witnessed in England. It w^as from the Artillery Ground. Fox was there with his bro- ther General F. The crowd was immense. Fox, happening to put his hand down to his watch, found another hand upon it, which he immediately seized. " My friend," said he to the owner of the strange hand, " you have chosen an occupation which will be your ruin at last." — " 0, Mr. Fox," was the reply, " forgive me, and let me go ! I have been driven to this course by necessity alone ; my wife and children are starving at home." Fox, always tender-hearted, slipped a guinea into the hand, and then released it. On the conclusion of the show. Fox was proceeding to look what o'clock it was. " Good God," cried he, 86 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE "my watch is gone ! " — " Yes," answered General F.,. " I know it is ; I saw your friend take it." — " Saw him take it ! and you made no attempt to stop him ? " — " Keally, you and he appeared to be on such good terms with each other, that I did not choose to interfere." I was walking through the Louvre wdth Fox, when he all but cut Mackintosh, passing him with a nod and a "How d'ye do?" and he gave me to understand that he had done so because he was angry at Mackintosh for ha\'iug accepted a x^lace in India from the Tories, Fitzpatrick, however, told me the real cause of Fox's anger ; and it was this ; — Mrs, Mackintosh had not called upon Mrs. Fox, whom Fox had recently acknowledged as his wife. Such slight things sometimes influence the conduct of great men. Most unfortunately, one morning during break- fast at St, Anne's Hill, I repeated and praised Goldsmith's song, " When lovely woman stoops tO' folly," &c., quite forgetting that it must necessarily hurt the feelings of Mrs. Fox. She seemed a good deal discomposed by it. Fox merely remarked, " Some people write damned nonsense." When Buonaparte said to Fox, he was con- Table-talk of samuel Rogers. 87 vinced that Windham was implicated in the contriv- ance of the Infernal Machine, Fox warmly repelled such an aspersion on Windham's character, assuring the First Consul that no Englishman would degrade himself by being concerned in so vile a business. — I told this to Windham, who answered very coldly, "Well, I should have said the same of him under similar circumstances." — I have heard Windham speak very disrespectfully of Fox in the House, after their political quarrel. Fox said that Sir Joshua Eeynolds never enjoyed Eichmond,* — that he used to say the human face was his landscape. Fox did not much admire Sir Joshua's pictures in the grand style ; he greatly pre- ferred those of a playful character : he did not like much even the Ugolino ; but he thought the boys in the Nativity were charming. Once, at Paris, talking to Fox about Le Sueur's pictures, I said that I doubted if any ai'tist had ever excelled Le Sueur in painting wJiite garments. Fox replied that he thought Andrea Sacchi superior to * Where Reynolds had a villa. — In Mr. Rogers's collection of pictures is an exquisite landscape by Sir Joshua, — a view from Richmond Hill, with the features of the scene a little altered.— Ed. 88 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE Le Sueur in that respect. I mention this to show that Fox was not only fond of painting, but had given minute attention to it.* He was an eager chess-player : I have heard him say, on coming down to breakfast, that he had not been able to sleep for thinking about some parti- cular move. While young Betty was in all his glory, I went with Fox and Mrs. Fox, after dining with them in Arlington Street, to see him act Hamlet ; and, dur- ing the play-scene, Fox, to my infinite surprise, said, " This is finer than Garrick."t — How wise it was in Kemble and Mrs. Siddons quietly to withdraw from the stage during the Betty furor, and then as c[uietly to return to it, as if nothing unusual had occurred ! * For au account of the delight which Fox received from visitiDg the Louvre, see Trotter's Memoirs of Fox, p. 209. — Ed. t Such criticism will now seem (and undoubtedly is) preposter- ous. But we must recollect that there was a marvellous charm about the young Pioscius. — " Northcote then spoke of the boy, as he always calls him (Master Betty). He asked if I had ever seen him act ; and I said, Yes, and was one of his admirers. He answer- ed, ' Oh 1 yes, it was such a beautiful e£fusion of natural sensibility; and then that graceful play of the limbs in youth gave such an advantage over every one about him. Humphreys (the artist) said, * He had never seen the little Apollo off the pedestal before.' " Hazlitt's Conversations of Northcote, p. 23. — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 89 Fox said that Barry's Eomeo was superior to Garrick's. " If I had a son," observed Fox, " I should insist on his frequently writing English verses, whether he had a taste for poetry or not, because that sort of composition forces one to consider very carefully the exact meanings of words." I introduced Wordsworth to Fox, having taken him with me to a ball given by Mrs. Fox. " I am very glad to see you, Mr. Wordsworth, though I am not of your faction," was all that Fox said to him, — meaning that he admired a school of poetry different from that to which Wordsworth belonged. Fox considered Burnet's style to be perfect. We were once talking of an historian's introducing oc- casionally the words of other writers into his work without marking them as quotations, when Fox said, " that the style of some of the authors so treated might need a little mending, but that Burnet's re- quired none." He thought that Kobertson's account of Colum- bus was very pleasingly written. He was so fond of Dryden, that he had some idea of editing his works. It w^as absurd, he said, not to 90 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE print the originals by Chaucer along with Dryden's versions of them ; and absurd in Malone to print all Dryden's Prefaces by themselves. "Dryden's imi- tations of Horace," he would say, " are better than the originals : how fine this is ! — ' Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call to-day his own ; He who, secure within, can say, To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day ; Be fair or foul, or rain or shine, The joys I have possess'd, in spite of Fate, are mine ; Not Heaven itself upon the j)ast has power, But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.' "* One afternoon, at his own house, Fox w^as talk- ing to me very earnestly about Dryden, when he suddenly recollected that (being in office) he ought to make his appearance at the King's levee. It was so late that, not having time to change his dress, he set off for Buckingham House " accoutred as he was ; " and when somebody remarked to him that his coat was not quite the thing, he replied, " No * Twenty-ninth Ode of the First Booh of Horace parapUrased, TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 91 matter ; he [i.e. George the Third] is so bhnd that he can't distinguish what I have on." There was a period of his life when Fox used to say that he could not forgive Milton for having oc- casioned hini the trouble of reading through a poem {Paradise Lost), three parts of which were not worth reading. He afterwards, however, estimated it more justly.* Milton's prose works he never could endure. He said that Mrs. Sheridan's Sidney Biddidph was the best of all modern novels. (By the by, Sheridan used to declare that he had never read it !f) When Fox was a young man, a copy of Mas- singer accidently fell into his hands : he read it, and, for some time after, could talk of nothing but Massinger. He thought so highly of the Isacco of Metastasio, that he considered it as one of the four most beau- tiful compositions produced during the century ; the * In a letter to Trotter, after noticing the predominance of " the grand and terrific and gigantic " in ^schylus, Fox continues ; "This never suits my taste ; and I feel the same objection to most parts of the Paradise Lost, though in that poem there are most splendid exceptions, Eve, Paradise, &c." Trotter's JUevioirs of Fox, p. 520.— Ed. f The incident, in The School for Scandal, of Sir Oliver's presenting himself to his relations in disguise, is manifestly taken by Sheridan from his mother's novel. — Ed. 92 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE other three bemg Pope's Eloisa to Ahclarcl, Voltaire's Zaire, and Gray's Elegy. "^^ " No one," said Fox, " could be an ill-tempered man, who wrote so much nonsense as Swift did." His admiration of Ariosto was extreme. — He thought Petrarch's Latin letters better than his Son- nets. He once pointed out to me, as excellent, this pas- sage of Paley " The distinctions of civil life are almost always insisted upon too much, and urged too far. Whatever, therefore, conduces to restore the level, by qualifying the dispositions which grow out of great elevation or depression of rank, improves the character on both sides. Now things are made to appear little by being placed beside what is great. In which manner, superiorities, that occupy the whole field of the imagination, will vanish or shrink to their proper diminutiveness, when compared with the dis- tance by which even the highest of men are removed from the Supreme Being, and this comparison is naturally introduced by all acts of joint worship. If ever the poor man holds up his head, it is at church : * Yet, we have been told, Fox did not consider the Elegy as Gray's best poem : see p. 37. — Ed. Table-talk of samuel rogees. 93 if ever the rich man views him with respect, it is there : and both will be the better, and the public profited, the oftener they meet in a situation, in which the consciousness of dignity in the one is tem- pered and mitigated, and the spirit of the other erected and confirmed."* Fox used to read Homer through once every year. On my asking him, "Which poem had you rather have written, the Iliad or the Odijssey ?" he answered, " I know wliich I had rather read " (mean- ing the Odi/ssey).-f Euripides was his grand favourite among the Greek poets. He fancied that Shakespeare must have met with some translation of Euripides, | for he could trace resemblances between passages of their dramas : e. g. what Alcestis in her last moments says about her servants is like what the dying Queen Katharine (in Henry the Eighth) says about hers, &c. He considered the CEdijms Colonels as the best play of Sophocles; and he admired greatly his Electra. * Mor. and Pol. PhilosojjJiy, b. v. ch. i. — Ed. f "I suppose," says Fox, in a letter to Trotter, " as soon as j'ou have done the Iliad, 3'ou will read the Odyssey, which, though cer- tainly not so fine a poem, is, to my taste, still pleasanter to read." Trotter's Memoirs of Fox, p. 494.— Ed. % A mere fancy.— Ed. 94 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE He did not much like Caesar's Commentaries ; they appeared to him rather dry, and deficient in thought. He said that the letter to Oppius and Balbus/'- which is very little known, w^as the piece that did Caesar most honour; and that he had once transcribed it with the intention of sending it to Buonaparte, when the news of the Duke d'Enghien's death made him change his mind. He observed that the Greek historians generally * Extant in the collection of Cicero's Ejilst. ad Aft. lib. ix. 7. C. It was written at the commencement of the civil war; and (in tlie translation of Heberden) is as follows: " I am very glad that you express in your letter liow much 3'ou approve of what has been done at Corfinium. I shall willingly adoj^t your advice ; and the more so, because of my own accord I had resolved to show every lenity, aud to use my endeavours to conciliate Pompcius. Let us try by these means if we can regain the affections of all people, and render our victory lasting. Others from their cruelty have not been able to avoid the hatred of mankind, nor long to retain their victory ; except L. Sulla alone, whom I do not meaa to imitate. Let this be a new method of conquering, to fortify ourselves with kindness and liberality. How this may be done, some things occur to my own mind, and many others may be found. To this subject I request your attention. I have taken Cn. Magius, Pompeius's prie- fect. I accordingly put in practice my own principle, and immedi- ateh' released him. Already two of Pompeius's pnefects of engi- neers have fallen into my power, and have been released. If they are disposed to be grateful, they should exhort Pompeius to prefer my friendship to that of these people, who have always been the worst enemies to him and to me ; by whose artifices it has hap- pened that the Republic has come into this condition." — Ed, TABLE-TALK OP SAMUEL ROGERS. 95 told nothing but truth, while the Latin historians generally told nothing but lies. He was a constant reader of Virgil ; and had been so from a very early period. There is at Hol- land House a copy of Virgil covered with Fox's manuscript notes, written when he was a boy, and expressing the most enthusiastic admiration of that poet. He once told me that the extracts which he had seen from Hippocrates had given him a high opinion of that writer ; — that one of his aphorisms was excel- lent, — "The second-best remedy is better than the best, if the patient likes it best ; " — and that he in- tended to read his works. Afterwards, calling upon him in Stable Yard when he happened to be ill, I found him reading Hippocrates. — On that occasion I said I wished that the new administration would put down the east w'ind by an Act of Parliament. He replied, smiling (and waking, as it were, from one of his fits of torpor), that they would find it difficult to do that, but that they would do as much good in that as they would in any thing else. He said that Lear, Othello, and Macbeth were 96 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE the best of Shakespeare's works ; that the first act of Hamlet was pre-eminent ; that the ghost in that play was quite unequalled, — there was nothing like it ; and that Hamlet was not mad. — On another occa- sion he said that the character of Macbeth was very- striking and original, — that at first he is an object of our pity, and that he becomes gradually worse and worse, till at last he has no virtue left except courage. He thought Ealeigh a very fine writer. Boling- broke he did not like. Surrey was " too old " for him. He said that Congreve's Way of the World was a charming comedy, but his Mo7irning Bride alto- gether execrable ; that Sheridan's Pizarro was the worst thing possible. He had never been able to read Mickle's Lusiad through. He once met Mickle, and took a dislike to him. He was fond of the song, " The heavy hours are almost past," by Lord Lyttelton ; whose son, he said, was a very bad man, — downright wicked. He thought Mrs. Barbauld's Life of Bichardson admirable ; and regretted that she wasted her talents TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 07 in writing books for children (excellent as those books might be), now that there were so many pieces of that description. The Adventurer, he said, was very poor; The World far superior, and he had read it with pleasure. He thought Tickell's* hues On the Death of Addison quite perfect ; and he liked a large portion of his Kensington Gardens. He often spoke with high praise of Cowper's Epistle to Joseph Hill. It was through Windham that he first became acquainted with Cowper's poetry. Very shortly before he died, he complained of great uneasiness in his stomach ; and Cline advised him to try the effects of a cup of coffee. It was ac- cordingly ordered : but, not being brought so soon as was expected, Mrs. Fox expressed some impa- tience ; upon which Fox said, with his usual sweet smile, " Eemember, my dear, that good coffee can- not be made in a moment." Lady Holland announced the death of Fox in her own odd manner to those relatives and intimate * "Tickell's merit," Wordsworth remarked to me, "is not sufficiently known. I think him one of the very best writers of occasional verses." — Ed. 7 98 EE COLLECTIONS OF THE frieucls of his who^were sitting in a room near his bed-chamber, and ^Yaitmg to hear that he had breathed his last ; — she wahced through the room with her apron thrown over her head. Trotter's Memoirs of Fox, though incorrect in some particulars, is a very pleasing book. Trotter died in Ireland : he was reduced to great straits ; and Mrs. Fox sent him, at different times, as much as several hundred pounds, though she could ill spare the money. How fondly the surviving friends of Fox che- rished his memory ! Many years after his death, I w'as at a fete given by the Duke of Devonshire at Chiswick House. Sir Eobert Adair and I wandered about the apartments, up and down stairs. "In which room did Fox expire?" asked Adair. I re- plied, "In this very room." Immediately Adair burst into tears with a vehemence of grief such as I hardly ever saw exhibited by a man. Fox's History of the Early Part of the Beign of James the Second has been greatly undervalued ; but it will be properly estimated in future times. It contains charming passages. Here are two : when I read them, I seem to listen to Fox conversing: — TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL EOGEES. 99 "From the execution of the king to the death of Cromwell, the government was, with some variation of forms, in substance monarchial and absolute, as a government established by a military force will almost invariably be, especially when the exertions of such a force are continued for any length of time. If to this general rule our own age, and a people whom their origin and near relation to us w^ould al- most warrant us to call our own nation, have afforded a splendid and perhaps a solitary exception, we must reflect not only, that a character of virtues so happily tempered by one another, and so wholly unalloyed with any vices, as that of Washington, is hardly to be found in the pages of history, but that even Washington himself might not have been able to act his most glorious of all parts, without the exist- ence of circumstances uncommonly favourable, and almost peculiar to the country which was to be the theatre of it. Virtue like his depends not in- deed upon time or place ; but although in no country or time would he have degraded himself into a Pisistratus, or a Caesar, or a Cromwell, he might have shared the fate of a Cato or a De Witt ; or, like Ludlow and Sydney, have mourned in 100 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE exile the lost liberties of his country."" — The other passage is this : — "But to Temple's sincerity his subsequent con- duct gives abundant testimony. When he had reason to think that his services could no longer be useful to his country, he withdrew wholly from public busi- ness, and resolutely adhered to the preference of philosophical retirement, which, in his circumstances, was just, in spite of every temptation which occurred to bring him back to the more active scene. The remainder of his life he seems to have employed in the most noble contemplations and the most elegant amusements ; every enjoyment heightened, no doubt, by reflecting on the honourable part he had acted in public affairs, and without any regret on his own ac- count (whatever he might feel for his country) at having been driven from them."f Burke said to Mrs. Crewe :| "A dull proser is more endurable than a dull joker." He also said to her: "England is a moon shone * P. 17,— Ed. t P. 20.— Ed. X Afterwards Lady Crewe. — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL EOGEES. 101 upon by France. France has all things within herself; and she possesses the power of recovering from the severest blows. England is an artificial country : take away her commerce, and w^hat has she?" One day Foote was taken in to White's by a friend who w^anted to write a note. Foote, standing in a room among strangers, appeared to feel not quite at ease. Lord Carmarthen, wishing to relieve his embarrassment, came up to speak to him ; but, himself feeling rather shy, he merely said, "Mr. Foote, your handkerchief is hanging out of your pocket." Upon which, Foote, looking suspiciously round, and hurriedly thrusting the handkerchief back into his pocket, replied, "Thank you, my lord; you know the company better than I do." Fox told me that Lord William Bentinck once invited Foote to meet him and some others at dinner in St. James's Street ; and that they were rather angry at Lord William for having done so, expecting that Foote would prove only a bore, and a check on their conversation. "But," said Fox, "we soon found that we were mistaken : whatever we talked 102 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE about, — whether fox-hunting, the turf, or any other subject, — Foote instantly took the lead, and delighted us all." Murphy, who used to dwell with enthusiasm on his recollections of Chatham's oratory, was once in the gallery of the House with Foote, when Pitt (Lord Chatham) w^as putting forth all his power in an attack on Murray (Lord Mansfield) . ' ' Shall we go home now?" said Murphy. — "No," replied Foote; " Let us w^ait till he has made the little man (Mur- ray) vanish entirely." There was no end to Foote's jokes about Garrick's parsimony. " Garrick," said Foote, " lately invited Hurd to dine with him in the Adelphi ; and after dinner, the evening being very warm, they walked up and down in front of the house. As they passed and repassed the dining-room windows, Garrick was in a perfect agony ; for he saw that there was a thief in one of the candles which were burning on the table ; and yet Hurd was a person of such conse- quence that he could not run away from him to pre- vent the waste of his tallow." At the Chapter Coffee-house, Foote and his friends were making a contribution for the relief of TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 103 a poor fellow (a decayed player, I believe), who was nick-named the Captain of the Four Winds, because his hat was worn into four spouts. Each person of the company dropped his mite into the hat, as it was held out to him. "If Garrick hears of this," said Foote, "he will certainly send us his hat." The then Duke of Cumberland (the fooUsJr' Duke, as he was called), came one night into Foote's green-room at the Haymarket Theatre. "Well, Foote," said he, " Here I am, ready, as usual, to swallow all your good things." — " Upon my soul," replied Foote, "Your Eoyal Highness must have an excellent digestion, for you never bring any up again." During my youth I used to go to the Hampstead Assemblies, which were frequented by a great deal of good company. There I have danced four or five minuets in one evening. Beau Nash was once dancing a minuet at Bath with a Miss Lunu. She was so long of giving him both her hands (the figure by which the lady, when * For a vindication of his Eoyal Highness from this epithet, see Boaden's Life of KemMe, ii. 17. — Ed. ]04 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE she thinks proper, brings the performance to a close), that he lost all patience, and, suiting the words to the tune (which was Marshal Saxe's minuet), he sung out as she passed him, — " Miss Luun, Miss Lunn, Will vou never have done ? " * I always distrust the accounts of eminent men by their contemporaries. None of us has any reason to slander Homer or Julius Caesar ; but we find it very difficult to divest ourselves of prejudices when we are writing about persons with whom we have been acquainted. Lord St. Helens (who had been ambassador to Russia) told me as a fact, this anecdote of the Empress Catherine. She frequently had little whist-parties, at which she sometimes played, and sometimes not. One night, when she was not play- * On the charge hrought against me in Tlie Athencsum, that I have not accurately reported this trifling anecdote, see Addenda. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 105 ing, but walking about from table to table, and watching the different hands, she rang the bell to summon the page-in-waiting from an ante-chamber. No page appeared. She rang the bell again ; and again without effect. Upon this, she left the room, lookmg daggers, and did not return for a very consi- derable time ; the company supposing that the unfor- tunate page was destined to the knout or Siberia. On entering the ante-chamber, the Empress found that the page, like his betters, was busy at whist, and that, when she had rung the bell, he happened to have so very interesting a hand that he could not make up his mind to quit it. Now, what did the Empress do ? she despatched the page on her errand, and then quietly sat down to hold his cards till he should return. Lord St. Helens also told me that he and Segur were with the Empress in her carriage, when the horses took fright, and ran furiously down hill. The danger was excessive. When it was over, the Em- press said, " Mon etoile vous a sauvee." Hare's wit, once so famous, owed perhaps not a little to his manner of uttering it. Here is a speci- lOG RECOLLECTIONS OF THE men. Fox was sitting at Brookes's, in a very moody humour, having lost a considerable sum at cards, and was indolently moving a pen backwards and forwards over a sheet of paper. " What is he draw- ing?" said some one to Hare. "Any thing but a draft," was the reply. General Fitzpatrick was at one time nearly as famous for his wit as Hare. During the latter part of his long life he had withdrawn a good deal from society. I took farewell of him the day but one before he died. On the day immediately preceding his death, I walked to his house in Arlington Street to inquire for him ; and, just as I reached the door, Mrs. Fox was coming from it, sobbing violently. Jekyll, too, was celebrated for his wit ; but it was of that kind which amuses only for the moment. I remember that when Lady Cork gave a party at which she wore a most enormous plume, Jekyll said, " She was exactly a shuttle-cock, — all cork and feathers." While Rousseau was lodging in Chiswick Ter- race, Fitzpatrick called upon him one day, and had Table-talk of samuel eogers. lo: not been long in the room when David Hume en- tered. Eousseau had lost a favourite dog; and Hume, having exerted himself to recover it, now brought it back to its master, who thanked him with expressions of the most fervent gratitude, and shed tears of joy over the animal. Fitzpatrick, who had been much in the company of David Hume, used always to speak of him as " a delicious creature." Hume told Cadell the bookseller that he had a great desire to be introduced to as many of the per- sons who had written against him as could be col- lected ; and requested Cadell to bring him and them together. Accordingly, Dr. Douglas, Dr. Adams, &c. &c., were invited by Cadell to dine at his house in order to meet Hume. They came ; and Dr. Price, who was of the party, assured me that they were all delighted with David. I knew Murphy long and intimately : I was in- troduced to him by the Piozzis at Streatham. 108 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE On the first night of any of his plays, if the shghtest symptoms of disapprobation were shown by the audience, Murphy always left the house, and took a walk in Covent-Garden Market : then, after having composed himself, he would return to the theatre. Garrick once, in conversation with Murphy, hav- ing insisted that it was much more difficult to write a play whose strength lay in the plot than one which depended on the dialogue for its pffect. Murphy went to his favourite haunt, the Talbot at Richmond, and wrote, nearly at a single sitting, a comedy of the former description (I forget its name), which, very soon after he presented to Garrick. The days had been when Murphy lived in the best society, and used to walk about arm-in-arm with Lord Loughborough : but I have seen them meet in the street, and salute each other very formally. Towards the close of his life, till he received a pension of 200Z. per annmn from the king,* Murphy was in great pecuniary difficulties. He had eaten himself out of every tavern from the other side of Temple-Bar to the west end of the town. I have still * The pension was granted to him in 1803 : he died in 1805. — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL EOGERS. 109 in my possession several bills of his for money to a considerable amount which he never repaid me. — He had borrowed from me two hundred pounds ; and a long time having elapsed without his taking any notice of the debt, I became rather uneasy (for two hundred pounds was then no trifling sum to me). At last, meeting him in Fleet Street, I asked him when he should be able to settle with me. " Are you going home?" said he. "Yes," I replied; and we walked to my chambers in the Temple. There, instead of making any arrangements for repaying me, he ex- erted all his eloquence, but in vain, to induce me to lend him more money ; and I thanked heaven when I got rid of him. — He assigned over to me the whole of his works, including his Tacitus ; and I soon found that he had already disposed of them to a bookseller ! For this transaction Murphy came, in extreme agita- tion, to offer me a sort of apology, almost throwing himself on his knees. When he made his appear- ance. Person and Maltby* happened to be in the room;! but, Porson having said aside to Maltby, "We * See notice prefixed to the Porsoniana in this \o\ume.—ET>. t Mr. Eogers was then lodging in Prince's Street, Hanover Square ; from which he removed to St. James's Place.— Ed. 110 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE had better withdraw," they left me to my disagree- able conference w^ith Murphy, One thing ought to be remembered to Murphy's honour : an actress,* wdth w^hom he had lived, be- queathed to him all her property, but he gave uja every farthing of it to her relations. Murphy used to say that there were Four Estates in England, the King, the Lords, the Commons, and — tlie Tlieatres. He certainly would not say so, if he were alive now, when the national theatre is almost extinct. Henderson was a truly great actor ; his Hamlet and his Falstaff were equally good. He was a very fine reader too : in his comic readings superior, of course, to Mrs. Siddons ; his John Gilinn was mar- vellous. He would frequently produce very unexpected " effects " in his readings : for instance, in the passage of Collins's Ode to Fear, — " Or throws him on the ridgy steep Of some lojse-hanging rock to sleep ; " — * Miss Elliot.— En. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL EOGEKS. Ill he would suddenly pause after the words " loose- hanging rock," and then, starting back as if in amaze- ment, and lifting his arms above his head, he would slowly add — " to sleep ! "* During his boyhood, Pitt was very weakly ; and his physician, Addiugton (Lord Sidmouth's father) ordered him to take port wine in large quantities : the consequence was, that, when he grew up, he could not do without it. Lord Grenville has seen him swallow a bottle of port in tumblerfuls, before going to the House. This, together with his habit of eating late suppers (indigestible cold veal-pies, &c.), helped undoubtedly to shorten his life. Hus- kisson, speaking to me of Pitt, said that his hands shook so much, that, when he helped himself to salt, he was obliged to support the right hand with the left. Stothard the painter happened to be one evening at an inn on the Kent Eoad, when Pitt and Dundas put up there on their way from Walmer. Next * I must he allowed to observe, that I do not agree with Mr. Rogers in admiring the effect in question. It was certainly not in- tended by the poet. — Ed. 112 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE morning, as they were stepping into their carriage, the waiter said to Stotharcl, " Sir, do you observe these two gentlemen?" — "Yes," he repHed ; "and I know them to be Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas." — " Well, sir, how much wine do you suppose they drank last night ? " — Stothard could not guess. — " Seven bottles, sir." Lord Grenville once said to Pitt, " I am really astonished at your fluency in public speaking : how was it acquired? " He replied, " I believe it may be attributed to this circumstance : when I was a lad, my father used every evening to make me translate freely, before him and the rest of the family, those portions of Livy, Virgil, &c., which I had read in the morning with my tutor, Mr. Wilson." — Lord Grenville engaged a reporter to take down Pitt's speeches ; but the reporter completely failed. Pitt had been accustomed when a boy to go a- bird-nesting at Holwood, and hence (according to Lord Grenville) his wish to possess that place ; which he eventually did. I was assured by Lord Grenville that Pitt came into office with a fixed determination to improve the TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. lU finances of the kingdom ; instead of which he greatly injured them, I don't remember having heard of any hon-mots being uttered by Pitt in society; and those persons who were very intimate with him could tell me little in favour of his conversational powers : one great lady who knew him well, said that he was generally quite silent in company ; and a second could give me no other information about him, but that (being a tall man) " he sat very high at table ! " There was a run on the Bank, and Pitt was un- certain what measures to take m consequence of it. He passed the whole night (as Mrs. told me) in walking up and down his drawing-room. Next morning he sent for certain bankers, and informed them that he had resolved on issuing five-pound notes. — I recollect a farmer coming to my father's bank and receiving his money in five-pound notes.''' " What can I do with these?" he exclaimed ; " how can I pay my men with them ? " * Very shortly before this (as my friend, Mr. Samuel Sharpe, informs me) five-pound notes had been issued : smaller notes were not issued till some time afterwards. — Ed. IH KECOLLECTIONS OF THE Wilberforce requested Pitt to read Butler's Ana- logy /■'' Pitt did so ; and was by no means satisfied with the reasoning in it. " My dear Wilberforce," he said, " you may prove any thiiuj by analogy." Combe, author of TJic Diaholiad, of Lord Lyttel- tons Letters, and more recently, of Dr. Syntax's Three Tours, \ was a most extraordinary person. During a very long life, he had seen much of the world, — its ups and downs. He was certamly well- connected. Fitzpatrick recollected him at Douay College.:]: He moved once in the highest society, and * One evening, at a party, when Butler's Analogy was men- tioned, Parr said in his usual pompous manner, ' I shall not de- clare, before the present company, my opinion of that book.' Bowles, who was just then leaving the room, muttered, 'Nobody cares what you think of it.' Parr, overhearing him, roared out, 'What's that you say, Bowles 1 ' and added, as the door shut on the offender, ' It's lucky that Bowles has gone ! for I should have put him to death.' " Mr. Maltby (see notice prefixed to the Porsoniana in this volume). — Ed, f And of an astonishing number of other works. — all pub- lished anonymously. — Ed, X According to The GcnUcmaii's Ilarjazine for August, 1823, p. 185 (where his name is wrongly spelled Coomh(i), " he was edu- cated at Eton and Oxford:" which is not inconsistent with his having been at Douay also. But there seems to be great un- certainty about the particulars of his life. — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 115 was very intimate with the Duke of Bedford. Twenty thousand pounds were unexpectedly bequeathed to him by an old gentleman, who said " he ought to have been Combe's father " (that is, he had been on the point of marrying Combe's mother), and who therefore left him that large sum. Combe contrived to get rid of the money in an incredibly short time. Combe was staying at the house of Uvedale Price ;* and the Honourable Mr. St. John (author of Mary Queen of Scots]) w^as there also. The lat- ter, one morning, missed some bank-notes. Price, strongly suspecting who had taken them, mentioned the circumstance to Combe, and added, " Perhaps it would be as well if you cut short your visit here." — "Oh, certamly," replied Combe with the greatest coolness; " and allow me just to ask, whether hence- forth WQ are to be friends or acquaintances?" — "Acquaintances, if you please," said Price. ;!■ — Long * Afterwards a baronet. — Ed. t A very dull tragedy, in which Mrs. Siddons continued to act the heroine occasionally up to the time of her retirement from the stage. I recollect her performing Mary at Edinburgh during my boyhood.— Ed. J From the tone of some letters written by Combe in his old age, one Avould certainly not suppose that he had on his conscience any thing of the kind above alluded to. " The only solid happi- 116 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE after this had happened, I was passing through Lei- cester Square with Price, when we met Combe : we both spoke to him; but from that hour he always avoided me. Combe assured me that it was with him, not with Sterne, that " Ehza "'■' was in love; that he used to meet her often beside a windmill near Brighton ; that he was once surprised in her bed-chamber, and fled through the window, leaving one of his shoes behind him ; that, some days after, he encountered her as she was walking with a party on what is now the Steyne (at Brighton), and that, as she passed him, she displayed from her muff the toe of his shoe ! Combe died in the King's Bench, f where it was ness in this life," he says, "is the performance of duty ; the rest, when compared with it, is not worth a regret or a rememhrance. . . . A thousand hours of pleasurable gratification will weigh but as dust in the balance against one hour of solid virtue Few men have enjoyed more of the pleasures and brilliance of life than myself; and you, I well know, will believe me, when I assure you that, in looking back upon it, the brightest intervals of it are those wherein I resisted iuclination, checked impetuosity, over- came temptation, frowned folly out of countenance, or shed a tear over the unfortunate." Letters to Marianne, p. 7. — Ed. * A list of Combe's writings, drawn up by himself, and printed in Tlie Gentlemans 3Iagazlne for May, 1852, p. 467, includes " Letters supposed to have passed between Sterne and Eliza, 2 vols."— Ed. t He died, June'19th, 1823, at his apartments in Lambeth Eoad, TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS, 117 said that he had taken refuge in order to cheat his creditors, — erroneously, for he did not leave enough to pay the expenses of his funeral. Gibbon took very little exercise. He had been staying some time with Lord Sheffield in the coun- try ; and when he was about to go away, the servants could not find his hat. "Bless me," said Gibbon, " I certainly left it in the hall on my arrival here." He had not stirred out of doors during the whole of the visit. These lines by Bishop (Head-master of Merchant- Tailors' School) are very good in their way : — " To Mrs. Bishojy, iv'dh a Present of a Knife. 'A knife,' dear girl, ' cuts love,' they say ! Mere modish love perhaps it may ; For any tool, of any kind, Can separate — what was never join'd. The knife that cuts our love in two Will have much tougher work to do ; in his 82d year. See The Gentleman's Magazine for August 1823, p. 185.— Ed. 118 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE Must cut your softness, truth, and spirit, Down to the vulgar size of merit ; To level yours with modern taste, ]Must cut a world of sense to waste ; And from your single beauty's store Clip what would dizeu out a score. That self-same blade from me must sever Sensation, judgment, sight, for ever; All memory of endearments past, All hope of comforts long to last ; All that makes fourteen years with you A summer, — and a short one too; All that affection feels and fears, AVhen hours without you seem like years. Till that be done (and I'd as soon Believe this knife will chip the moon), Accept my present, undeterr'd, And leave their proverbs to the herd. If in a kiss— delicious treat! — Your lips acknowledge the receipt, Love, fond of such substantial fare, And proud to play the glutton there, All thoughts of cutting will disdain. Save only — ' cut and come again.' " TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 119 I never saw Paley ; but my brother knew him ■well, and liked him much. Paley used to say, in his broad dialect, "I am an advocate for corrooption" (that is, parliamentary influence).* Witticisms are often attributed to the wrong people. It was Lord Chesterfield, not Sheridan, who said, on occasion of a certain marriage, that " No- body's son had married Everybody's daughter." * Among several anecdotes of Paley, communicated to me long ago by a gentleman who resided in the neighbourhood, were these. — When Paley rose in the church, he set up a carriage, and, by his wife's directions, his arms were painted on the panels. They were copied from the engraving on a silver cup, which Mrs. P. supposed to be the bearings of his family. Paley thought it a pity to unde- ceive his wife ; but the truth was, he had purchased the cup at a sale. He permitted, — nay, wished, — his daughters to go to evening parties ; but insisted that one of them should always remain at home, to give her assistance, if needed, by rubbing him, &c., in case of an attack of the rheumatic pains to which he was subject. " This," he said, " taught them natural affection." His fourth son chose to be a fai-mer, and was sent by his father to Redburn, where, in order to train him to his business, he was frequently employed in works of manual labovu'. A friend, having seen the young man so occupied, expressed his surprise at the cii'cumstance to Paley, who replied, " Practice, practice is everything." Of the card-playing Curate of G. and his wife, he used to say that " they made much more by whist than by the curacy." — Ed. i:0 KECCLLECTIONS OF THE Lord Chesterfield remarked of two persons danc- ing a minuet, that " they looked as if they were hired to do it, and w^ere doubtful of being paid." I once observed to a Scotch lady, " how desirable it was in any danger to have ]3rescnce of 7nind." "I had rather," she rejoined, " Jiave absence of body." The mediant Lord Lyttleton used to play all sorts of tricks in his boyhood. For instance, when he knew that the larder at Hagley happened to be ill- supplied, he would invite, in his father's name, a large party to dinner ; and, as the carriages drove up the avenue, the old lord (concealing his vexation as much as possible) w^ould stand bowing in the hall, to welcome his unwelcome guests. There is at Hagley a written account of the mccliant Lord Lyttelton's death, which was read to me while on a visit there. The statement, as far as I recollect, runs thus. — One night, when he was in bed, a white bird, with a voice like a woman's, — or else, a female figure with a bird on her hand, — appeared to him, and told him that he must die at a particular hour on a particular night. He re- TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 121 lated the circumstance to some of his friends, who ■encom-aged him in treating it as a dehision. The fatal night arrived. He was then at a house (Pitt Place) near Epsom ; and had appointed to meet a party on the downs nest morning. His friends, with- out his knowledge, had put back the clock. " I shall cheat the ghost yet," he said. On getting into bed, he sent his servant down stairs for a spoon, having to take some medicine. When the servant returned, Xiord Lyttelton was a corpse.* * lu the " Corrections and Additions," p. 36, to Xash's History of Worcestershire, is an account of Lord Lytteltou's vision and death, more detailed than the above, but not materiall)'^ different. —Ed. Of Lord Lyttelton's ghost appearing to Miles Peter Andrews (an anecdote quite as notorious as that above) the following account was given by Andrews himself to his most intimate friend, Mr. Morton the dramatist, by whom it was told to me. " I was at Rich- mond: and I had not been long in bed, when I saw Lord Lyttelton standing at the foot of it. I felt no surprise, because he was in the habit of comiDg to me at all hours without previous announcement. i spoke to him; but he did not answer. Supposing that he intended, as usual, to play me some trick, I stooped out of bed, and taking up one of my slippers, I threw it at him. He vanished. Next morning, I inquired of the people of the house when Lord Lyttelton had ■arrived, and where he was? They declared that he' had not arrived. He died at the very moment I saw him." A version of this ghost- ■story, too, is given by Nash (xihi siijpra), who states that Andrews 122 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE Frequently, when doubtful how to act in matters of importance, I have received more useful advice from women than from men. Women have the un- derstanding of the heart ; which is better than that of the head. As I was walking home one day from my father's bank, I observed a great crowd of people streaming into a chapel in the City Eoad. I followed them ; and saw laid out, upon a table, the dead body of a clergyman in full canonicals. It was the corpse of John Wesley ; and the crowd moved slowly and silently round and round the table, to take a last look at that most venerable man."" addressed the gliost, and that " the ghost, shaking his head, said, ' It is all over with me.' " But Mr. Morton assured me that he re- lated the story exactly as he had had it from Andrews^ whose convic- tion that he had seen a real spectre was i^i-oof against all arguments. —Ed. * Since the above was written a letter has appeared in The Gentleman'' s Magazine for February, 185G, where (p. 148) the writer states that Mr. Eogers, rcry late in life, mentioned to him this anecdote, with the important variation— that the body of Wesley was lying in the drawing-room of a ho7isc to the left of the chaiJel. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL EOGEKS. 123 Dr. Priestley went to Paris in company with Lord Shelburne ;* and he assured me that all the eminent Frenchmen whom he met there, were entirely des- titute of any religious belief, — sheer atheists. At a large dinner-party he asked his next neighbour, "Who is that gentleman?" The answer was, "It is ; and he believes no more than you and I do.' — Marmontel used to read some of his unpublished works to parties of his friends, on certain days, at his own house. Priestley, who attended a few of those readings, declared that Marmontel occasionally gesticulated with such violence, that it was necessary But, towards the close of his career, Mr. Eogcrs's memory was not to be trusted to for minute particulars. " At the desire of many friends, his body was carried into the chapel the day preceding the interment, and there lay in a kind of state becoming the per- son, dressed in his clerical habit, with gown, cassock, and band ; the old clerical cap on his head, a Bible in one hand, and a white handkerchief in the other. The face was placid, and the exjires- sion which death had fixed upon his venerable featvires was that of a serene and heavenly smile. The crowds who flocked to see him were so great, that it was thought prudent, for fear of acci- dents, to accelerate the funeral, and perform it between five and six in the morning, «&c. Southey's Life of Wesley, ii., 562, ed. 1820. Wesley died 2d March 1791.— Ed, * Afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne,— to whom, nominally, Priestley acted as Librarian, but really as his literary companion. It was in 1774 that they made a tour to the continent.— Ed. 124 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE to keep out of the reach of his arms for fear of being knocked down. I was intimately acquainted with Dr. Priestley ; and a more amiable man never lived ; he was all gentleness, kindness, and humility. He was once dining wdth me, when some one asked him (rather rudely) "how many books he had published?" He replied, " Many more, sir, than I should like to read." Before going to America, he paid me a visit, passing a night at my house. He left Eng- land chiefly in compliance wdth the washes of his wife. When Home Tooke was at school, the boys asked him "what his father w^as?" Tooke answered, "A Turkey merchant." (He was a poulterer.) He once said to his brother,* a pompous man, ■" You and I have reversed the natural course of * In repeating this anecdote, Mr. Rogers sometimes substituted " cousin " for '■^'brother.'''' — Tooke bad two brothers. 1. Benjamin Tooke, wlio settledat Brentford as a market-gardener, in which line he became eminent, and acquired considerable wealth. 2. Thomas Tooke, who was originally a fislimonger,and afterwards a poulterer, — a man, it is said, of strong intellect, but certainly careless and ■extravagant ; and who ended his career in one of the almshouses belonging to the Fishmongers' Company. — Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 125- things : you have risen by your gravity ; I have sunk by my levity. To Judge Ashhurst's remark, that the law was open to all, both to the rich and to the poor, Tooke replied, " So is the London Tavern." He said that Hume wrote his History as witches say their prayers — backwards. Tooke told me that in his early days a friend gave him a letter of introduction to D'Alembert at Paris. Dressed d-la-mode, he presented the letter, and was very courteously received by D'Alembert, who talked to him about operas, comedies, and sup- pers, &c. Tooke had expected conversation on very different topics, and was greatly disappointed. When he took leave, he was followed by a gentleman in a plain suit, who had been in the room during his interview with D'Alembert, and who had perceived his chagrin. "D'Alembert," said the gentleman, " supposed from your gay apparel that you were merely a jJC/J/i maitre." The gentleman was David Hume. On his next visit to D'Alembert, Tooke's dress was altogether different ; and so was the con- versation.-'' * Tooke spent considerably more than a year at Paris, wliile 126 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE Tooke went to Italy as tutor to a young man of fortune,* who was subject to fits of insanity, and who consequently would sometimes occasion much alarm at inns during the middle of the night. — While residing at Genoa, they formed an acquaintance wuth an Italian family of distinction, by whom they were introduced to the best society of the place. Tooke attached himself to a lady of great beauty, becoming her cavalier seruentc, and attending her everywhere. After some weeks, at a large evening-party, he was astonished to find that the lady would not speak to him, and that the rest of the company avoided con- versation with him. "Now," said Tooke, " what do you imagine was the cause of this ? Why, they had discovered tJiat I was a Protestant Clergyman ! But I was resolved not to be brow-beaten ; and I made myself so agreeable, that, before the party broke up we w"ere all again on the very best terms; some of acting as travelling-tutor to young Elwes (son of the miser; and he afterwards paid two short visits to that capital in company with young Taylor (see next note). It was, I apprehend, on the first of these occasions that liis introduction to D'Alembert took place. He was in full orders before he ever went to the Continent ; but he always laid aside the clerical dress at Dover. — Ed. * The son of a Mr. Taylor, who resided within a few miles of Brentford.— Ed. TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 127 them even waited on me home, with music, in a sort of triumph ! "'■' Soon after Tooke had left Genoa, he heard that another traveller, who was following the same route, had been assassinated. This unfortunate traveller was mistaken for Tooke, on whom, in consequence of his intrigue with the lady at Genoa, the blow had been intended to fall. I have been present when one of Tooke' s daugh- ters was readmg Greekf to him with great facility. He had made her learn that language without using a grammar, — only a dictionary. I paid five guineas (in conjunction with Bod- dington) for a lotje at Tooke's trial. — It was the custom in those days (and perhaps is so still) to place bunches of strong-smelling plants of different sorts at the bar where the crimmal was to sit (I sup- pose, to purify the air from the contagion of his ]presence !). This was done at Tooke's trial ; but, as soon as he was brought in, he indignantly swept them * One of those letters, in which Wilkes publicl}'^ addressed Home Tooke, has the following passage; "Will you call an Italian gentleman now in town, your confident during your whole residence at Genoa, to testify the morality of your conduct iu Italy ! " f Latin, I suspect. — Ed. 128 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE away with his handkerchief. The trial lasted six. days. Erskine (than whom nobody had ever more power over a jury, — he would frequently address them as " his little twelvers") defended Tooke most admirably : nay, he showed himself not only a great- orator, but a great actor ; for, on the fifth day, when the Attorney-General, Eldon, was addressing the jury, and was using a line of argument which Erskine had not expected and could not reply to (the j)lead- ing for the prisoner being closed), I well remember how Erskine the wdiole time kept turning towards the jury, and by a series of significant looks, shrugs, , and shakings of his head, did all he could to destroy the effect of what the Attorney-General w^as saying. — After a very long speech, Eldon, with the perspi- ration streaming down his face, came into the room W'here the Lord Mayor w^as sitting, and exclaimed, " Mr. Tooke says that he should like to send Mr. Pitt to Botany Bay ; but it would be more merciful to make him Attorney-General." — When Eldon was told that the mob had talxcn mvay the horses from Erskine's carriage, and drawn him home in triumph to Sergeants' Inn, he asked "If they had ever re- turned them ?" TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 12& At the conclusion of the trial, a daughter of one of the jurymen was anxious to be introduced to Tooke ; who, shaking her by the hand, said very prettily, "I must call you sister, for you are the daughter of one of those to whom I owe my life." — If Tooke had been convicted, there is no doubt that he would have been hanged. We lived then under a reign of terror. One night, after dining with him at Cline's (the surgeon), I accompanied Tooke to Brandenburgh House (the Margravine of Anspach's) to see a pri- vate play. During the performance, a person be- hind us said, " There's that rascal. Home Tooke." The words were uttered quite distinctly ; and Tooke was so offended, that he immediately withdrew. I went home with him to his house on the Common, and slept there, after sitting up very late to listen to his delightful talk. I often dined with Tooke at Wimbledon ; and always found him most pleasant and most witty. There his friends would drop in upon him without any invitation : Colonel Bosville would come fre- quently, bringing with him a dinner from London — fish, &c. — Tooke latterly used to expect two or 9 130 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE three of his most inthnate friends to dine with him every Sunday ; and I once offended him a good deal by not joining his Sunday dinner-parties for several weeks. Burdett was, of course, a great deal with Tooke. In little things, Burdett was a very inconsiderate person. One forenoon, when Tooke was extremely unwell, and a friend had sent him some fine hot- house grapes, Burdett, happening to call in, ate up every one of them. Tooke was such a passionate admirer of Milton's prose works, that, as he assured me, he had tran- scribed them all in his youth. For my own part, I like Harris's writings much. But Tooke thought meanly of them : he would say, " Lord Malmesbm-y is as great a fool as his father." He used to observe, that "though the books which you have lately read may make no strong im- pression on you, they nevertheless improve your mind ; just as food, though we forget what it was after we have eaten it, gives strength to the body." 0, the fallibility of medical people ! Both Pear- son and Cline, on one occasion, informed Tooke that he could not possibly survive beyond a single day : TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 131 and — he lived years !' — Let me mention here what was told to me by a lady at Clifton. " In my girl- hood," she said, " I had a very severe illness, dming which I heard Dr. Turton declare to my mother, in * In a note on Boswell's Life of Juknsoii (p. 5(32. ed. lSi8), relative to Lord Mayor Beckford's famous speech (or rather, re- joinder) to the king in 1770, Mr. Croker observes: "Mr. Bosville's manuscript note on this passage says, 'that the monument records, not the words of Beckford, but what was prepared for him by John Home Tooke, as agreed on at a dinner at Mr. George Bellas's in Doctors' Commons.' This, I tliinlc, is also stated in a manuscript note in the Museum copy; but Mr. Gifford says, 'he never uttered one syllable of the speech.' (^Bcn Jouf:on, i. 481.) Perhaps he said something which was afterwards put into its present shape by Home Tooke." — In Stephens's Mcmob-x of Home Tooke (vol. i. 155-7) we have the following account. " This answer [of the king] had been, of course, anticipated, and Mr. Home, who was determined to give celebrity to the mayoralty of his friend, Mr. Beckford, at the same time that he supported tbe common cause, had suggested tlie idea of a reply to the sovereign; a measure hitherto unexampled in our history." Stevens then proceeds to say that the Lord Mayor " expressed himself nearly as follows," &c. ; and presently adds, " This, as Mr. Home lately acknowledged to me, was /