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'I doubt greatly if the English have any eloquence, properly so called; and am inclined to think that the Irish had a great deal, and that the French will have, and have had in Mirabeau. Lord Chatham and Burke are the nearest approaches to orators in England. I don't know what Erskine may have been at the bar, but in the House I wish him at the bar once more. Lauderdale is shrill, and Scotch, and acute.

"But amongst all these, good, bad, and indifferent, I never heard the speech which was not too long for the auditors, and not very intelligible, except here and there. The whole thing is a grand deception, and as tedious and tiresome as may be to those who must be often present. I heard Sheridan only once, and that briefly, but I liked his voice, his manner, and his wit: and he is the only one of them I ever wished to hear at greater length.

"The impression of Parliament upon me was, that its members are not formidable as speakers, but very much so as an audience; because in so numerous a body there may be little eloquence, (after all, there were but two thorough orators in all antiquity, and I suspect still fewer in modern times,) but there must be a leaven of thought and good sense sufficient to make them know what is right, though they can't express it nobly.

"Horne Tooke and Roscoe both are said to have declared that they left Parliament with a higher opinion of its aggregate integrity and abilities than that with which they entered it. The general amount of both in most Parliaments is probably about the same, as also the number of speakers and their talent. I except orators, of course, because they are things of ages, and not of septennial or triennial re-unions. Neither House ever struck me with more awe or respect than the same number of Turks in a divan, or of Methodists in a barn, would have done. Whatever diffidence or nervousness I felt (and I felt both, in a great degree) arose from the number rather than the quality of the assemblage, and the thought rather of the public without than the persons

1 [Mr. Courtenay was a native of Ireland, but descended from a branch of the noble Devonshire family of that name. He was the intimate friend of Boswell, and a member of the Literary Club. In 1786, he published a "Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson ;" and in 1793," A Poetical and Philosophical Essay on the French Revolution, addressed

within, — knowing (as all know) that Cicero himself, and probably the Messiah, could never have altered the vote of a single lord of the bedchamber, or bishop. thought our House dull, but the other animating enough upon great days.

"I have heard that when Grattan made his first speech in the English Commons, it was for some minutes doubtful whether to laugh at or cheer him. The débût of his predecessor, Flood, had been a complete failure, under nearly similar circumstances. But when the ministerial part of our senators had watched Pitt (their thermometer) for the cue, and saw him nod repeatedly his stately nod of approbation, they took the hint from their huntsman, and broke out into the most rapturous cheers. Grattan's speech, indeed, deserved them; it was a chef-d'ouvre. I did not hear that speech of his (being then at Harrow), but heard most of his others on the same question—also that on the war of 1815. 1 differed from his opinions on the latter question, but coincided in the general admiration of his eloquence.

"When I met old Courtenay, the orator, at Rogers's the poet's, in 1811-12, I was much taken with the portly remains of his fine figure, and the still acute quickness of his conversation. It was he who silenced Flood in the English House by a crushing reply to a hasty début 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 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.""

to Mr. Burke." He died in 1816, at the age of seventyfour. "He was," says Sir James Mackintosh," a man of fine talents and of various accomplishments, which rendered his conversation agreeable, as his good nature and kind heart obtained for him the attachment of many excellent friends: but, from his speeches in parliament, strangers mistook him for a jester by profession."]

CHAPTER XVII.

1813.

singer near the end, and one cannot quarrel with one's company, at any rate. The author detects some incongruous figures in a passage of English Bards, page 23., but which edition I do not know. In the sole copy in your possession I mean the fifth edition - you may make these alterations, that I may profit MR. GIFFORD, THANKING HIM FOR ADVICE (though a little too late) by his remarks :ON RELIGIOUS TOPICS. MADAME DE STAEL. PROJECTED VOYAGE TO THE EAST. ANECDOTES.-ADDITIONS TO THE GIAOUR.- COOKE, THE ACTOR. -TRAVELLING PROJECTS.

DESIGN OF VISITING SICILY.-LETTER TO

1

For hellish instinct,' substitute 'brutal instinct; harpies' alter to 'felons ;' and for 'blood-hounds' write 'hell-hounds. These be very bitter words, by my troth,' and the ABYSSINIA. LU- alterations not much sweeter; but as I shall not publish the thing, they can do no harm, but are a satisfaction to me in the way of amendment. The passage is only twelve lines.

CIEN BUONAPARTE'S CHARLEMAGNE.-
LETTER FROM ALI PACHA AND то
MR. SOUTHEY. IMPROMPTU. — INTRO-
DUCTION TO MR. CURRAN. COMMENCE-
MENT OF THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS.

-

FOR Some time he had entertained thoughts of going again abroad; and it appeared, indeed, to be a sort of relief to him, whenever he felt melancholy or harassed, to turn to the freedom and solitude of a life of travel as his resource. During the depression of spirits which he laboured under, while printing Childe Harold, "he would frequently," says Mr. Dallas, "talk of selling Newstead, and of going to reside at Naxos, in the Grecian Archipelago, to adopt the eastern costume and customs, and to pass his time in studying the Oriental languages and literature." The excitement of the triumph that soon after ensued, and the success which, in other pursuits besides those of literature, attended him, again diverted his

thoughts from these migratory projects. But the roving fit soon returned; and we have seen, from one of his letters to Mr. William Bankes, that he looked forward to finding himself, in the course of this spring, among the mountains of his beloved Greece once For a time, this plan was exchanged for the more social project of accompanying his friends, the family of Lord Oxford, to Sicily; and it was while engaged in his preparatives for this expedition that the annexed letters were written.

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"You do not answer me about H.'s book; I want to write to him, and not to say any Office, Portsmouth, till called for, I will send thing unpleasing. If you direct to Post and receive your letter. You never told me which is not too fair; and I do not think jusof the forthcoming critique on Columbus, tice quite done to the Pleasures,' which surely entitle the author to a higher rank than that assigned him in the Quarterly. But I must not cavil at the decisions of the invisible infallibles; and the article is written. The general horror of fragments' makes me tremulous for The Giaour;' but you would publish it - I presume, by this time, to your repentance. But as I consented, whatever be its fate, I won't now quarrel with you, even though I detect it in my pastry; but I shall not open a pie without apprehension for some weeks.

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very

well

I will carry out. Do you know Clarke's Nau-
The books which may be marked G. O.
fragia? I am told that he asserts the first vo-
lume of Robinson Crusoe was written by the
first Lord Oxford, when in the Tower, and
given by him to Defoe; if true, it is a curious
anecdote. Have you got back Lord Brooke's
Write to me at Portsmouth.
MS.? and what does Heber say of it?

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Ever yours, &c.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"N."

"June 18. 1813.

Will you forward the enclosed answer to the kindest letter I ever received in my

him from a wolf into a harpy, and in three more he will make him a bloodhound."

There are also in this MS. critique some curious instances of oversight or ignorance adduced from the Satire; such as "Fish from Helicon "" -"Attic flowers Aonian odours breathe," &c. &c.

O

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'My dear Sir, "I feel greatly at a loss how to write to you at all-still more to thank you as I ought. If you knew the veneration with which I have ever regarded you, long before I had the most distant prospect of becoming your acquaintance, literary or personal, my embarrassment would not surprise you.

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Any suggestion of yours, even were it conveyed in the less tender shape of the text of the Baviad, or a Monk Mason note in Massinger, would have been obeyed; I should have endeavoured to improve myself by your censure: judge then if I should be less willing to profit by your kindness. It is not for me to bandy compliments with my elders and my betters: I receive your approbation with gratitude, and will not return my brass for your gold by expressing more fully those sentiments of admiration, which, however sincere, would, I know, be unwel

come.

"To your advice on religious topics, I shall equally attend. Perhaps the best way will be by avoiding them altogether. The already published objectionable passages have been much commented upon, but certainly have been rather strongly interpreted. I am no bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that, because I doubted the immortality of man, I should be charged with denying the existence of a God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world, when placed in comparison with the mighty whole, of which it is an atom, that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be over-rated.

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1 The remainder of this letter, it appears, has been lost.

2 [" And ah! what verse can grace thy stately mien,
Guide of the world, preferment's golden queen,
Necker's fair daughter, Stael the Epicene!
Fain would the Muse-but ah! she dares no more,
A mournful voice from lone Guiana's shore,
Sad Quatremer, the bold presumption checks,
Forbid to question thy ambiguous sex.

"These lines contain the secret history of Quatremer de Quiney's deportation. He presumed, in the council of five-hundred, to arraign Madame de Stael's conduct, and even to hint a doubt of her sex. He was sent to Guiana." — Canning's New Morality.]

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Yesterday I dined in company with*** [Stael,] the Epicene,' whose politics are sadly changed. She is for the Lord of Israel and the Lord of Liverpool-a vile antithesis of a Methodist and a Tory-talks of nothing but devotion and the ministry, and, I presume, expects that God and the government will help her to a pension.

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Murray, the aval of publishers, the Anak of stationers, has a design upon you in the paper line. He wants you to become the staple and stipendiary editor of a periodical work. What say you? Will you be bound, like 'Kit Smart, to write for ninety-nine years in the Universal Visitor?" Seriously, he talks of hundreds a year, and - though I hate prating of the beggarly elements — his proposal may be to your honour and profit, and, I am very sure, will be to our pleasure.

"I don't know what to say about ‘friendship.' I never was in friendship but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love. I am afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the king, when he wanted to knight him, that I am too old ;' but, nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, fame, and felicity, than,

"Yours, &c."

Having relinquished his design of accompanying the Oxfords to Sicily, he again thought of the East, as will be seen by the following letters, and proceeded so far in his preparations for the voyage as to purchase of Love, the jeweller, of Old Bond Street, about a dozen snuff-boxes, as presents for some of his old Turkish acquaintances.

LETTER 124.

TO MR. MOORE.

" 4. Benedictine Street, St. James's, July 8. 1813.

"I presume by your silence that I have blundered into something noxious in my re

3 [" Old Gardner the bookseller employed Rolt and Smart to write the Universal Visitor. There was a formal agreement, which Allen the printer saw. They were bound to write nothing else, were to have a third of the profits, and the contract was for ninety-nine years." -DR. JOHNSON: Boswell, vol. v. p. 288.]

↑ [" But first the monarch, so polite,
Asked Mr. Whitbread if he'd be a knight?
Unwilling in the list to be enrolled,
Whitbread contemplated the knights of Peg,
Then to his generous sovereign made a leg,
And said, He was afraid he was too old,'" &c.
Peter Pindar.]

ply to your letter, for the which I beg leave to send beforehand a sweeping apology, which you may apply to any, or all, parts of that unfortunate epistle. If I err in my conjecture, I expect the like from you, in putting our correspondence so long in quarantine. God he knows what I have said; but he also knows (if he is not as in

different to mortals as the nonchalant deities of Lucretius), that you are the last person I want to offend. So, if I have, why the devil don't you say it at once, and expectorate your spleen?

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Rogers is out of town with Madame de Stael, who hath published an Essay against Suicide, which, I presume, will make somebody shoot himself; -as a sermon by Blinkensop, in proof of Christianity, sent a hitherto most orthodox acquaintance of mine out of a chapel of ease a perfect atheist. Have you found or founded a residence yet? and have you begun or finished a poem? If you won't tell me what I have done, pray say what you have done, or left undone, yourself. I am still in equipment for voyaging, and anxious to hear from, or of, you before I go, which anxiety you should remove more readily, as you think I sha'n't cogitate about you afterwards. I shall give the lie to that calumny by fifty foreign letters, particularly from any place where the plague is rife, without a drop of vinegar or a whiff of sulphur to save you from infection.

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The Oxfords have sailed almost a fortnight, and my sister is in town, which is a great comfort,—for, never having been much together, we are naturally more attached to each other. I presume the illuminations have conflagrated to Derby (or wherever you are) by this time. We are just recovering from tumult and train oil, and transparent fripperies, and all the noise and nonsense of victory. Drury Lane had a large M. W., which some thought was Marshal Wellington; others, that it might be translated into Manager Whitbread; while the ladies of the vicinity of the saloon conceived the last letter to be complimentary to themselves. I leave this to the commentators to illustrate. If you don't answer this, I sha'n't say what you deserve, but I think I deserve a reply. Do you conceive there is no PostBag but the Twopenny? Sunburn me, if

you are not too bad."

["Madame de Stael treats me as the person whom she most delights to honour,; I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon: she is one of the few persons who surpass expectation; she has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular, if, in society, she were to confine herself to her inferior

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I want to get away, but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war. They had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word mouth, I'll rant as well as they.' Now, 'nay, an' they'll what are you doing? writing, we all hope, for our own sakes. Remember you must edite my posthumous works, with a Life of fessions, dated, Lazaretto,' Smyrna, Malta, the Author, for which I will send you Conone can die any where.

or Palermo

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"There is to be a thing on Tuesday ycleped a national fête. The Regent and ** * are to be there, and every body else, who has shillings enough for what was once a guinea. Vauxhall is the scene- there are six tickets issued for the modest women, and

it is supposed there will be three to spare. The passports for the lax are beyond my arithmetic.

"P. S. The Stael last night attacked me most furiously—said that I had no right to make love-that I had used * * barbarously that I had no feeling, and was totally insensible to la belle passion, and hear it, but did not know it before. Let me had been all my life.' I am very glad to hear from you anon."

talents — pleasantry, anecdote, and literature. I have reviewed her Essay on Suicide in the last Edinburgh Review: it is not one of her best, and I have accordingly said more of the author and the subject than of the work." SIR J. MACKINTOSH: Life, vol. ii. p. 264.]

LETTER 126. TO MR. MOORE.

"July 25. 1813. I am not well versed enough in the ways of single woman to make much matrimonial progress.

I have been dining like the dragon of Wantley for this last week. My head aches with the vintage of various cellars, and my brains are muddled as their dregs. I met your friends the D**s:- she sang one of your best songs so well, that, but for the appearance of affectation, I could have cried; he reminds me of Hunt, but handsomer, and more musical in soul, perhaps. I wish to God he may conquer his horrible anomalous complaint. The upper part of her face is beautiful, and she seems much attached to her husband. He is right, nevertheless, in leaving this nauseous town. The first winter would infallibly destroy her complexion, and the second, very probably, every thing else.

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"I must tell you a story. Morris (of indifferent memory) was dining out the other day, and complaining of the Prince's coldness to his old wassailers. D'Israeli (a learned Jew) bored him with questions why this? and why that? Why did the Prince act thus ?'- - Why, sir, on account of Lord **, who ought to be ashamed of himself.' And why ought Lord ** to be ashamed of himself? Because the Prince, sir, ** And why, sir, did the Prince cut you?' Because, G-d d-mme, sir, I stuck to my principles.' And why did you stick to your principles ?' Is not this last question the best that was ever put, when you consider to whom? It nearly killed Morris. Perhaps you may think it stupid, but, as Goldsmith said about the peas, it was a very good joke

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when I heard it - as I did from an earwitness and is only spoilt in my narra

tion.

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The season has closed with a dandy ball; but I have dinners with the Harrowbys, Rogers, and Frere and Mackintosh, where I shall drink your health in a silent bumper, and regret your absence till 'too much canaries' wash away my memory, or render it superfluous by a vision of you at the opposite side of the table. Canning has disbanded his party by a speech from his **

-the true throne of a Tory. Conceive his turning them off in a formal harangue, and bidding them think for themselves. 'I have led my ragamuffins where they are well peppered. There are but three of the 150 left alive, and they are for the Townsend (query, might not Falstaff mean the Bow

Street officer? I dare say Malone's posthumous edition will have it so) for life.'

"Since I wrote last, I have been into the country. I journeyed by night-no incident, or accident, but an alarm on the part of my valet on the outside, who, in crossing Epping Forest, actually, I believe, flung down his purse before a mile-stone, with a glow-worm in the second figure of number XIX - mistaking it for a footpad and dark lantern. I can only attribute his fears to a pair of new pistols wherewith I had armed him; and he thought it necessary to display his vigilance by calling out to me whenever we passed any thing- -no matter whether moving or stationary. Conceive ten miles, with a tremor every furlong. I have scribbled you a fearfully long letter. This sheet must be blank, and is merely a wrapper, to preclude the tabellarians of the post from peeping. You once complained of my not writing ;— I will heap coals of fire upon your head' by not complaining of your not reading. Ever, my dear Moore, your'n (isn't that the Staffordshire termination?)

LETTER 127. TO MR. MOORE.

"BYRON."

"July 27. 1813.

"When you next imitate the style of Tacitus,' pray add, 'de moribus Germannorum; this last was a piece of barbarous silence, and could only be taken from the Woods, and, as such, I attribute it entirely to your sylvan sequestration at Mayfield Cottage. You will find, on casting up accounts, that you are my debtor by several sheets and one epistle. I shall bring my hear from my attorney. I have forwarded action ;- if you don't discharge, expect to your letter to Ruggiero; but don't make a postman of me again, for fear I should be tempted to violate your sanctity of wax or wafer.

"Believe me ever yours indignantly,

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