"My DEAR BRUMMELL,--All my money is locked up in the funds.
"SCROPE DAVIS."
This was just before Brummell's escape to the Continent.
I have frequently asked Scrope Davis his private opinion of Lord Byron,
and invariably received the same answer--that he considered Lord Byron
very agreeable and clever, but vain, overbearing, conceited,
suspicious, and jealous. Byron hated Palmerston, but liked Peel, and
thought that the whole world ought to be constantly employed in
admiring his poetry and himself: he never could write a poem or a drama
without making himself its hero, and he was always the subject of his
own conversation.
During one of Henry Hobhouse's visits to Byron, at his villa near
Genoa, and whilst they were walking in the garden, his lordship
suddenly turned upon his guest, and, apropos of nothing, exclaimed,
"Now, I know, Hobhouse, you are looking at my foot." Upon which
Hobhouse kindly replied, "My dear Byron, nobody thinks of or looks at
anything but your head."