When Brummell was obliged by want of money, and debt, and all that, to
retire to France, he knew no French; and having obtained a grammar for
the purpose of study, his friend Scrope Davies was asked what progress
Brummell had made in French. He responded, that Brummell had been
stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the _Elements_.
“I have put this pun into _Beppo_, (says Lord Byron), which is a fair
exchange and no robbery, for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners,
(as he owned himself,) by repeating occasionally, as his own, some of
the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in the morning.”