_Containing opinions, characters, &c. of his Cotemporaries._
Shelley had some excellent qualities: I attribute his eccentricities to a
spice of insanity. He often wrote unintelligibly;--sometimes in short
lyrics, beautifully. The ashes of him and Keats sleep together in the
Protestant chapel at Rome. I am resolved once more to visit _Lirici_,
where the funeral pile of his relics were lighted. I am never so happy as
when I am travelling on the Continent; the mere change of air, and
locomotion, gives me vigour. I saw old Sir William Wraxall at Dover, a few
days before he died, and meant to have accompanied him to Paris. He was
still full of anecdote, to which it was necessary to listen with caution;
but his information was often curious and valuable. He was one of our
oldest litterateurs.
Some years ago I met Sismondi: I could not agree with his ULTRA-LIBERAL
politics! He has married an English lady, but does not seem to love the
English. He himself once suffered from excessive revolutionism, and was
condemned to death by it when young, about 1794, in the reign of terror,
when _Monsieur Raville_ and others were shot at Geneva. One would have
thought that this would have made a convert of him in favour of legitimate
governments. But I forget: he does not call them legitimate! He is a thick
man, of middle height, with strong features, sallow, with weak eyes, rapid
and rather indistinct in his articulation, with a character of great
generosity and kindness; but not very tolerant to others in political
thinking.
About 1802, strange lawyers perched upon the judgment-seat. Law, Pepper,
Arden, and John Mitford! The little Pepper once took it into his head to
review a cavalry regiment of fencibles, when he was Master of the Rolls.
An unruly horse of one of the officers got head in a charge, and nearly
ran over the affrighted judge. I was on the field, saw it all; and heard
the small, staring man's terrible shriek! He swore that nothing should
ever make him go soldiering again! He could not recollect his law-cases
for a fortnight to come! He had some fun about him, and was always crying
out, _"Ne sutor ultra crepidam, ne sutor ultra crepidam."_ and indeed he
looked like a shoemaker. A bowel-complaint carried him off. Perhaps it was
the fright!
A certain learned theological bishop of that fraternity, a warm
controversialist, long since dead, was of an amorous disposition. One day,
being left alone with a pretty young lady, he began to be rude to her; she
knocked off his prelated wig, and stamped it under her foot. At that time
the footman entered, and all was confusion! The girl was in tears; the
bishop's pate was bald. The footman was left to wonder! Some squibs
appeared in the papers of the day, which few understood. I wrote a piquant
epigram, which I will not revive. Old Thurlow, who was the prelate's
friend and patron, laughed outright, and clapped me on the back when I
dined with him a few days afterwards.
I have been more than once in company with Washington Irving, a most
amiable man and great genius, but not lively in conversation. The engraved
portraits I have seen of him are not very like him. He frequented the
reading-room of Galignani at Paris, and seemed to have some literary
connexions with him. There I saw Captain Medwin, the author of the book
called _Lord Byron's Conversations_, which I believe to have been
accurately reported. He was with his friend Grattan, the author of
_High-ways and Bye-ways_. I was not personally acquainted with either of
them. Grattan's flat nose is somewhat concealed in the print given of him
in Colburn's Magazine, where this author, of course, makes a distinguished
figure.
The late Professor Pictet, of Geneva, who had spent some of his early days
in England, and was very fond of it, told me some curious anecdotes of
his countryman De Lolme, whose book on the English constitution is much
more commended than it deserves. He once endeavoured to set up a rival
Journal to Old Swinton's _Courrier de l'Europe_, but his absurd denial of
Rodney's victory ruined the project. De Vergennes, the French minister,
patronized it. Brissot was connected with Swinton in the above-named
Journal. One of Swinton's sons holds a high situation in the British
Government in India:--another commanded a ship in the Company's service.
Old Swinton was a Scotch jacobite, and forfeited.
Horace Walpole, who died Earl of Orford, was a little old man with small
features--very lively and amusing,--who talked just as he wrote: but a
little too fond of baubles and curiosities. He had a witty mind, but not a
great one:--yet he was a man of genius. His family was ancient, but his
vanity made him always endeavour to represent it of much more consequence
than it was. They had a great deal of the Norfolk squierarchy about them.
He could not bear his uncle Horace, the diplomatist, whose son, the
grandfather of the present earl, with his little tie-wig, looked like an
old-fashioned glover.
I have mentioned Mrs. Macauley, the historian. She had a dog latterly, of
which she made a great pet, and on being asked why she bestowed so much
care on it, she answered--"Why! are you aware whence it came? It is a true
republican, and has been stroked by the hand of Washington!" The event of
the French Revolution maddened her with joy; but when the news came of
Louis the Sixteenth's escape, and before she heard he had been brought
back, she took to her bed, wrote to her friends that she should die of the
disappointment--and did die. She complained that Dr. Graham had given her
a love-potion! Her young husband used her ill.
Tom Warton, the poet, was a good-natured man, but addicted to low company.
He was fond of
"Smoking his pipe upon an alehouse bench;"
He was tutor to Colonel North, the son of the minister, who thought he
neglected him. This connexion, perhaps, led him to write the _Life of Sir
Thomas Pope_, or rather that this family were founders of Warton's college.
He also wrote the life of the President Bathurst, who was elder brother of
Sir Benjamin Bathurst, a commercial man, father to the first Lord Bathurst,
the friend of Pope the poet, and who lived to the age of ninety, in
possession of his faculties,--always calling his son, the Chancellor,
"the old man!" He was one of Queen Anne's _twelve_ peers--but so rapid has
been the extinction and change, that the Bathursts are now considered old
nobility. He sprung from one of the _Grey Coat_ families in the weald of
Kent, the clothiers.
Old Dr. Farmer, the head of Emanuel College, Cambridge, Prebendary of
Canterbury, and afterwards of St. Paul's, or Westminster, used to frequent
a club in London, to which I belonged. He was at first reserved and silent:
but his forte was humour and drollery. At Cambridge he neglected forms and
ceremonies in his college too much: and was in all his glory when in
dishabille in his study, with his cat by his side, and his Shakspeare
tracts about him. He found no literature at Canterbury, and was disgusted
with his brother members of the cathedral: quaint Dean Horne, and
chattering romancing Dr. Berkeley, and his rhodomontading wife, were not
suited to him, and as little her son Monke Berkeley, of whom she gave such
an absurd and mendacious memoir, and who had none of his celebrated
grandfather Bishop Berkeley's genius. Farmer had some cleverness, but no
leading talent. He collected an immense quantity of rare and forgotten old
English books--especially poetry and the drama--at a trifling price. Todd,
the learned editor of Milton, Spencer, &c., was then a member of that
cathedral; but as his literary superiority was not pleasant to those above
him in that establishment, he was got rid of by promotion, elsewhere, out
of their patronage. He wrote the lives of the Deans of that Church, which
does not rise to more than local interest. It is a dull book.
It has been my fate to be Acquainted with Irish Secretaries. I saw much of
little Charles Abbot--afterwards Speaker--and at last Lord Colchester.
He was a pompous dwarf; yet of an analytical head. Nothing could be more
amusing than to see him strut up the House of Commons to take the chair;
nor was the amusement less to listen to him, when he delivered his edicts,
or the thanks of the House from the chair. His sonorous voice issuing from
a diminutive person, and the epigrammatic points of empty sentences,
formed with great artifice, were in very bad taste--though much admired by
a House which consisted of so few men of a classical education. His rise
was extraordinary, because his talents little exceeded mediocrity. But he
was a courtier, and an intriguant. He was the son of a schoolmaster at
Colchester.
Swift, though of English extraction, was born in Ireland. From some
memoranda of my grandfather's, I learn, that he did not speak of his
residence with Sir William Temple at Moore Park, in Surrey, without spleen.
He seemed to retain a sort of unwilling awe of Sir William; but not to
have loved him. Sir William was a ceremonious courtier: Swift's early
habits were somewhat rude and slovenly. Swift had genius, as Gulliver's
travels prove; but there is no genius in his poetry. He was both proud and
vain. His ancestor was the rector of a small living in Kent; his father an
attorney. When I was quartered at Canterbury, I saw the monument for one
of his ancestors, preserved out of the old church at St. Andrew's and
replaced in the new one. The arms sculptured on it are totally different
from what Swift erroneously supposes the family to have borne: this
ancestor was minister of that parish--not a prebendary, as Swift
represents. Miss Vanhomrigg was cousin of my grandfather, who considered
that Swift had used her very cruelly.
I often met the late Monsieur Etienne Dumont, of Geneva, the friend and
commentator of old Jeremy Bentham, at Romilly's house in London, in 1789.
He was a man of astonishing talents, sagacity, acuteness, and clearness of
head. What part he had in the brilliant effusions of Mirabeau, and in the
French Revolution, may be seen by his posthumous work, just published at
Paris, entitled _Souvenirs de Mirabeau_. He was a short, thick man, of
coarse features, blear eyed, and slovenly in his dress; but of mild
manners, hospitable, an excellent story-teller, and much beloved. I think
he had been at one time librarian to old Lord Lansdowne. He died at Milan,
in 1829, aged about 70. The French cannot contain their rage at the
exposure that he was the spirit who moved their brilliant Mirabeau.
I was once talking to Anna Maria Porter about him, when she expressed her
astonishment at the admiration I bestowed on him! She said, "I thought you
was a Whig, and an aristocrat! how can you commend a revolutionary
radical?" I answered, "You mistake his character, he is not a radical in
the sense you mean! he considers Tom Paine's Rights of Man to be
mischievous nonsense!" I could not convince her: but I made my peace with
her by praising, with the utmost sincerity, her beautiful novel, _The
Recluse of Norway_. I found her full of good sense, and with much command
of language. She will forgive me for saying she had not the personal
beauty of her gentle sister Jane. She paid many compliments to the
imaginative _vivants_ of the green island; for she perceived by my tones
that I was an Irishman, though I am not sure, that she knew even my name;
for the company was numerous, and of all countries. It was an evening
assembly, in which the rooms were so full, that one could hardly move.
Tommy Moore was there, and though he is a very little man, he was the
great lion of the evening: all the young ladies were dying to see the bard
whose verses they had chanted so often with thrilling bosoms, and tears
running down their cheeks. They were not quite satisfied when they saw a
diminutive man, not reaching five feet, with a curly natural brown scratch,
handing about an ugly old dowager or two, who fondly leaned upon his arms,
even though they discovered them to be ladies of high titles.
Rogers came in late, and went away early, looking sallower and more
indifferent than usual. He paid a few bows and compliments to two or three
noble peeresses, and then retired.
The Rev. Thomas Frognel Dibdin was there. He was very facetious and quaint:
when he found himself by my side, he instantly started off, crying to me;
"Brobdignagian; We Lilliputians must not stand by you! You would make a
soldier for the King of Prussia! Look at that tall lady there, that Miss
de V----; why do you not take her for a wife?" E---- G----n heard what he
said, and looked fierce at us both! I expected another _Bluviad!_ Perhaps
the ingenious bibliographer does not recollect the conversation; but he
may be assured it took place. And I entreat also Anna Maria Porter to tax
her memory, and recall the very interesting and sensible conversation I
had with her. I told her some anecdotes of her brother, Sir Robert, whom I
met on our travels, which pleased her. Jane would not talk much that night;
something heavy seemed to have seized her spirits. Let Jane recollect how
she once related to me the curious history and character of Percival
Stockdale! It happened at the house of a friend in London, whom I shall
not point out with too much particularity. Dibdin endeavoured to excite
the envy of some of us litterateurs, that we were not, like him, members
of the Roxburgh, which had dukes, and earls, and chancellors of the
exchequer, and judges, and the great Magician of the North into the
bargain!--_Metropolitan._
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