the English House by a crushing reply to a hasty débût of the rival of Grattan in Ireland. I asked Courtenay (for I like to trace motives) if he had not some personal provocation; for the acrimony of his answer seemed to me, as I read it, to involve it. Courtenay said "he had; that, when in Ireland (being an Irishman), at the bar of the Irish House of Commons, Flood had made a personal and unfair attack upon himself, who, not being a member of that House, could not defend himself, and that some years afterwards the opportunity of retort offering in the English Parliament, he could not resist it." He certainly repaid Flood with interest, for Flood never made any figure, and only made a speech or two afterwards, in the English House of Commons. I must except, however, his speech on Reform in 1790, which Fox called "the best he ever heard upon that subject."

CHILDE HAROLD.

I feel honoured by the wish of such men as Gifford that "Childe Harold" should be continued, but to do that I must return to Greece and Asia; I must have a warm sun and a blue sky; I cannot describe scenes so dear to me by a sea-coal fire. I had projected an additional canto when I was in the Troad and Constantinople, and if I saw them again, it would go on; but under existing circumstances and sensations, I have neither harp, “heart, nor voice" to proceed.

My work must make its way as well as it can; I know I have everything against me, angry poets and prejudices; but if the poem is a poem, it will surmount these obstacles, and if not, it deserves its fate.

Instruct Mr. Murray not to allow his shopman to call the work "Child of Harrow's Pilgrimage!!!!

DULNESS OF ENGLISH SOCIETY.

37

as he has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to inquire after my sanity on the occasion, as well they might.*-To Mr. Dallas, 1811.

A FORTUNATE MAN.

I never heard but of one man truly fortunate, and he was Beaumarchais, the author of " Figaro," who buried two wives and gained three lawsuits before he was thirty.

A DEVOTED HUSBAND.

Did you read of a sad accident in the Wye t'other day? A dozen drowned; and Mr. Rossoe, a corpulent gentleman, preserved by a boat-hook on an eel-spear, begged, when he heard his wife was saved-no—lost— to be thrown in again!!-as if he could not have thrown himself in, had he wished it ; but this passes for a trait of sensibility. What strange beings men are, in and out of the Wye!-To Mr. Bankes, Sept. 28,

1812.

DULNESS OF ENGLISH SOCIETY.

I return the Count D'Orsay's Journal, which is a very extraordinary production, and of a most melancholy truth in all that regards high-life in England. I know, or knew personally, most of the personages and societies which he describes; and after reading his remarks, have the sensation fresh upon me as if I had

* The two first cantos of Childe Harold were published early in March, 1812.

a

seen them yesterday. I would however plead in behalf of some few exceptions, which I will mention by and by. The most singular thing is, how he should have penetrated not the fact, but the mystery of the English ennui, at two-and-twenty. I was about the same age when I made the same discovery, in almost precisely the same circles,-(for there is scarcely a person mentioned whom I did not see nightly or daily, and was acquainted more or less intimately with most of them,) —but I never could have described it so well. Il faut être Français, to effect this. But he ought also to have been in the country during the hunting-season, with “ select party of distinguished guests," as the papers term it. He ought to have seen the gentlemen after dinner (on the hunting days), and the soirée ensuing thereupon,—and the women looking as if they had hunted, or rather been hunted; and I could have wished that he had been at a dinner in town, which I recollect at Lord Cowper's-small, but select, and composed of the most amusing people. The dessert was hardly on the table, when, out of twelve, I counted five asleep; of that five, there were Tierney, Lord * *, and Lord Darnley-I forget the other two, but they were either wits or orators-perhaps poets. Alas! our dearly beloved countrymen have only discovered that they are tired, and not that they are tiresome; and I suspect that the communication of the latter unpleasant verity will not be better received than truths usually are.To Lord Blessington, April 5, 1823.

MISERIES OF SOCIETY.

Last night, party at Lansdowne House. To-night, party at Lady Charlotte Greville's-deplorable waste of

POETRY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

39

time, and something of temper. Nothing imparted— nothing acquired talking without ideas: if anything like thought in my mind, it was not on the subjects on which we were gabbling. Heigho! and in this way

To-morrow there yes-to punish

half London pass what is called life. is Lady Heathcote's shall I go? myself for not having a pursuit.-Diary, March 22, 1814. I went out very little last year, and mean to go about still less. I have no passion for circles, and have long regretted that I ever gave way to what is called a town life; which of all the lives I ever saw (and they are nearly as many as Plutarch's), seems to me to leave the least for the past and future. To Mr. Moore, March 3, 1814.

THE PRINCE REGENT'S OPINION OF THE POETRY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Waving myself, let me talk to you of the Prince Regent. He ordered me to be presented to him at a ball; and after some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your immortalities: he preferred you to every bard past and present, and asked which of your works pleased me most. It was a difficult question. I answered, I thought the "Lay." He said his own. opinion was nearly similar. In speaking of the others, I told him that I thought you more particularly the poet of Princes, as they never appeared more fascinating than in "Marmion " and the "Lady of the Lake." He was pleased to coincide, and to dwell on the description of your Jameses as no less royal than poetical. He spoke alternately of Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both; so that (with the exception of the Turks and your humble servant) you were in

very good company. I defy Murray to have exaggerated his Royal Highness's opinion of your powers, nor can I pretend to enumerate all he said on the subject; but it may give you pleasure to hear that it was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe it, and with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to manners, certainly superior to those of any living gentleman. — To Sir Walter Scott, July 6, 1812.

MR. AND MISS EDGEWORTH.

I have been reading the Life, by himself and daughter, of Mr. R. L. Edgeworth, the father of the Miss Edgeworth. It is altogether a great name. In 1813, I recollect to have met them in the fashionable world of London (of which I then formed an item, a fraction, the segment of a circle, the unit of a million, the nothing of a something), in the assemblies of the hour, and at a breakfast of Sir Humphry and Lady Davy, to which I was invited for the nonce. I had been the lion of 1812. Miss Edgeworth and Madame de Stael, with the "Cossack," towards the end of 1813, were the exhibitions of the succeeding year.

I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow of a clarety elderly, red complexion, but active, brisk, and endless. He was seventy, but did not look fifty -no nor fortyeight even. I had seen poor Fitzpatrick not very long before, a man of pleasure, wit, eloquence, all things. He tottered, but still talked like a gentleman, though feebly. Edgeworth bounced about, and talked loud and long; but he seemed neither weakly nor decrepit, and hardly old,