retribution that any really classical production should be received as these plays have been treated."

Of his Lordship's good taste in the Fine Arts, the following passage presents no indication:

"Lord Byron knew nothing of the Fine Arts, and did not affect to care for them. He pronounced Rubens a dauber. The only pictures I remember to have seen in his rooms (with the exception of the Italian family pictures, that remained in the houses which he occupied) were a print of Jupiter and Antiope, and another of his little daughter, whom he always mentioned with pride. Pope, before he spoke of Handel, applied to Arbuthnot to know whether the composer really deserved what was said of him. It was after making a similar inquiry, respecting Mozart, that Lord Byron wrote the passage in his notes to Don Juan, giving him the preference to Rossini. Rossini was his real favourite. He liked his dash and animal spirits. All the best music, he said, was lively :-an opinion, in which few lovers of it will agree with him. Mr. Hazlitt, who is a connoisseur in the spirit of contradiction, may think that he said this out of spleen against some remark to the contrary; but in this, as in other instances, the critic is misled by his own practice. It was not difficult to discern the occasions on which Lord Byron spoke out of perversity; nor when it was that he was merely hasty and inconsequential; nor at what times he gave vent to an habitual persuasion; that is to say, translated his own practice and instinct into some sudden opinion. Such was the case in the present instance. I never knew him attempt any air but a lively one; and he was fondest of such as were the most blustering. You associated with it the idea of a stage-tyrant, or captain of banditti. One day he was splenetic enough on the subject of music. He said that all lovers of music were effeminate. He was not in good humour, and had heard me, that morning, dabbling on a piano-forte This was to provoke me to be out of humour myself; but I was provoked enough not to oblige him. I was ill, with an internal fever preying upon me, and full of cares of all sorts. He, the objector to effeminacy, was sitting in health and wealth, with rings on his fingers, and baby-work to his shirt; and he had just issued, like a sultan, out of his bath. I was nevertheless really more tranquil than he, ill and provoked as I was. I said that the love of music might be carried to a pitch of effeminacy, like any other pleasure, but that he would find it difficult to persuade the world, that Alfred, and Epaminondas, and Martin Luther, and Frederick the Second, all eminent lovers of music, were effeminate men. He made no answer. I had spoilt a stanza in "Don Juan."

In speaking of " Don Juan," Mr. Hunt says:--

"I will here observe that he had no plan with regard to that poem; that he did not know how long he should make it, nor what to do with his hero. He had a great mind to make him die a Methodist-a catastrophe which he sometimes anticipated for himself. I said I thought there was no reason for treating either his hero or himself so ill. That as to his own case, he would find himself mustering up his intellectual faculties in good style, as the hour came on, and there was something to do,-barring drugs and a bit of delirium; and with regard to Don Juan, he was a good, careless, well-intentioned fellow, (though he might not have liked to be told so in the hearing of every body); and that he deserved at least to be made a retired country gentleman, very speculative and tolerant, and fond of his grandchildren. He lent an ear to this, and seemed to like it; but after all, as he had not himself died or retired, and wanted experience to draw upon, the termination of the poem would have depended on what he thought the fashionable world expected of it. His hero in this work was a picture of the better part of his own nature."

His Lordship's opinions of England and his own countrymen are thus stated by Mr. Hunt:

"He cared nothing at all for England. He disliked the climate; he disliked the manners of the people; he did not think them a bit better than other nations and had he entertained all these opinions in a spirit of philosophy, he would have been right; for it does not become a man of genius to give up,' even to his country, what is meant for mankind.' He was not without some of this spirit; but undoubtedly his greatest dislike of England was owing to what he had suffered there, and to the ill opinion which he thought was entertained of him. It was this that annoyed him in Southey. I believe if he entertained a mean opinion of the talents of any body, it was of Southey's; and he had the greatest contempt for his political conduct (a feeling which is more common with men of letters than Mr. Southey fancies); but he believed that the formal and the foolish composed the vast body of the middle orders in England; with these he looked upon Mr. Southey as in great estimation; and whatever he did to risk individual good opinion, however he preferred fame and a 'sensation,' at all hazards, -he did not like to be thought ill of by any body of people."

His opinions on a more important subject--religion are thus recorded:

"The world have been much puzzled by Lord Byron's declaring himself a Christian every now and then in some part of his writings or conversations, and giving them to understand in a hundred others that he was none. The truth is, he did not know what he was; and this is the case with hundreds of the people who wonder at him. I have touched this matter before; but will add a word or two. He was a Christian by education; he was an infidel by reading. He was a Christian by habit; he was no Christian upon reflection. I use the word here in its ordinary acceptation, and not in its really Christian and philosophical sense, as a believer in the endeavour and the universality, which are the consummation of Christianity. His faith was certainly not swallowed up in charity; but his charity, after all, was too much for it. In short, he was not a Christian, in the sense understood by that word; otherwise he would have had no doubts about the matter, nor (as I have before noticed) would he have spoken so irreverently upon matters in which no Christian of this sort indulges licence of speech. Bigoted Christians of all sects take liberties enough, God knows. They are much profaner than any devout Deist ever thinks of being; but still their profanities are not of a certain kind. They would not talk like Voltaire, or say with Lord Byron, that, upon Mr. Wordsworth's showing, 'Carnage must be Christ's sister.'

We conclude this hasty notice of Mr. Hunt's very interesting work with a few anecdotes, selected almost at random from the early part of the volume.

"I passed a melancholy time at Albaro, walking about the stony alleys, and thinking of Mr. Shelley. My intercourse with Lord Byron, though less than before, was considerable; and we were always, as the phrase is, on good terms.' He knew what I felt, for I said it. I also knew what he thought, for he said that, in a manner ;' and he was in the habit of giving you a good deal to understand, in what he did not say. In the midst of all his strange conduct, he professed a great personal regard. He would do the most humiliating things, insinuate the bitterest, both of me and my friends, and then affect to do all away with a soft word, protesting that nothing he ever said was meant to apply to myself.

"I will take this opportunity of recording some more anecdotes as they occur to me. We used to walk in the grounds of the Casa Saluzzi, talking

for the most part of indifferent matters, and endeavouring to joke away the consciousness of our position. We joked even upon our differences of opinion. It was a jest between us, that the only book that was unequivocally a favourite on both sides, was Boswell's Life of Johnson.' I used to talk of Johnson when I saw him out of temper, or wished to avoid other subjects. He asked me one day, how I should have felt in Johnson's company. I said it was difficult to judge; because, living in other times, and one's character being modified by them, I could not help thinking of myself as I was now, and Johnson as he was in times previous: so that it appeared to me that I should have been somewhat Jacobinical in his company, and not disposed to put up with his ipse-dixits. He said, that Johnson would have awed him, he treated lords with so much respect.' This was better said than it was meant to be, and I have no doubt was very true. Johnson would have inade him a bow like a churchwarden; and Lord Byron would have been in a flutter of worshipped acquiescence. He liked to imitate Johnson, and say, Why, Sir,' in a high mouthing way, rising, and looking about him." "When Lord Castlereagh killed himself, it was mentioned in the papers that he had taken his usual tea and buttered toast for breakfast. I said there was no knowing how far even so little a thing as buttered toast might not have fatally assisted in exasperating that ill state of stomach, which is found to accompany melancholy. As the last feather breaks the horse's back,' so the last injury done to the organs of digestion may make a man kill himself. He agreed with me entirely in this; and said, the world were as much in the wrong, in nine cases out of ten, respecting the immediate causes of suicide, as they were in their notions about the harmlessness of this and that food, and the quantity of it.

"Like many other wise theorists on this subject, he had wilfully shut his eyes to the practice, though I do not mean to say he was excessive in eating and drinking. He had only been in the habit, latterly, of taking too much for his particular temperament; a fault, in one respect, the most pardonable in those who are most aware of it, the uneasiness of a sedentary stomach tempting them to the very indulgence that is hurtful. I know what it is; and beg, in this, as on other occasions, not to be supposed to imply any thing to my own advantage, when I am upon points that may be construed to the disadvantage of others. But he had got fat, and then went to the other extreme. He came to me one day out of another room, and said, with great glee, Look here! what do you say to this?' at the same time doubling the lapells of his coat one over the other :-' three months ago,' added he, I could not button it.' Sometimes, though rarely, with a desperate payment of his virtue, he would make an outrageous dinner; eating all sorts of things that were unfit for him, and suffering accordingly next day. He once sent to Paris for one of the travelling pies they make there-things that distribute indigestion by return of post, and cost three or four guineas. Twenty crowns, I think, he gave for it. He tasted, and dined. The next day he was fain to make a present of six-eighths of it to an envoy:- Lord Byron's compliments, and he sends his Excellency a pasty that has seen the world.' He did not write this; but this was implied in his compliment. It is to be hoped his Excellency had met the pasty before.

"It is a credit to my noble acquaintance, that he was by far the pleasantest when he had got wine in his head. The only time I invited myself to dine with him, I told him I did it on that account, and that I meant to push the bottle so, that he should intoxicate me with his good company. He said he would have a set-to; but he never did it. I believe he was afraid. It was a little before he left Italy; and there was a point in contest between us (not regarding myself) which he thought perhaps I should persuade him to give up. When in his cups, which was not often, nor immoderately, he was inclined to be tender; but not weakly so, nor lachrymose. I know not how it might have been with every body, but he paid me the compliment of being

excited to his very best feelings; and when I rose late to go away, he would hold me down, and say with a look of intreaty, 'Not yet.' Then it was that I seemed to talk with the proper natural Byron as he ought to have been; and there was not a sacrifice I could not have made to keep him in that temper, and see his friends love him, as much as the world admired. Next morning it was all gone. His intimacy with the worst part of mankind had got him again in its chilling crust; and nothing remained but to despair and joke.'

"In his wine he would volunteer an imitation of somebody, generally of Incledon. He was not a good mimic in the detail; but he could give a lively broad sketch; and over his cups his imitations were goodnatured, which was seldom the case at other times. His Incledon was vocal. I made pretensions to the oratorical part; and between us, we boasted that we made up the entire phenomenon. Mr. Mathews would have found it defective; or rather, he would not; for had he been there, we should judiciously have secreted our pretensions, and had the true likeness. We just knew enough of the matter, to make proper admirers.”

"Mr. Hazlitt had some reason to call him a sublime coxcomb.' Who but he (or Rochester perhaps, whom he resembled) would have thought of avoiding Shakspeare, lest he should be thought to owe him any thing? And talking of Napoleon,-he delighted, when he took the additional name of Noel, in consequence of his marriage with an heiress, to sign himself N. B.; 'because,' said he, Bonaparte and I are the only public persons whose initials are the same.'

We must here close our extracts, which have already been unconscionable. On the remaining parts of Mr. Hunt's book, we have not room at present to touch and we have been compelled to omit much that is new and curious with regard to the principal character in this lively volume of memoirs. To the Author's first acquaintance with Lord Byron, his Lordship's first love, marriage, separation, feelings and conduct on that occasion, his singular opinions on men, human passions, the fine arts, &c.; his first and last journeys in Greece, his learning, his habits of all kinds, &c. &c., we can only refer in passing. There is, moreover, a clever and vivacious portrait of Mr. Moore; a deeply interesting account of Mr. Shelley, and a briefer but equally touching one of Mr. Keats, with criticisms on the poetry of both; animated and characteristic sketches of Mr. Theodore Hook, Messrs. James and Horace Smith, Mr. Dubois, Mr. Mathews, Mr. Fuseli, Mr. Hazlitt, Mr. Charles Lamb, Mr. Coleridge, &c. &c.

The volume, concludes with a narrative of the Author's life and voyage to Italy, abounding in anecdote, and full of lively sketches and rapid traits of eminent and interesting individuals.

SKETCHES OF THE IRISH BAR.-NO. XVII.

Farewell of Lord Manners.

On the 31st day of July, in the year of our Lord 1827, Lord Manners, the late Keeper of his Majesty's Irish Conscience, bade the Irish Bar farewell. The scene which took place upon that melancholy occasion deserves to be recorded. It being understood that an address of professional condolence on behalf of the more loyal portion of the bar was to be pronounced by that tender enunciator of pathetic sentiment, the Attorney General, the Court of Chancery was crowded at an early hour. The members of the Beef-Steak Club, with countenances in which it was difficult to determine whether their grief at the anticipated "export" from Ireland, or the traces of their multitudinal convivialities, enjoyed a predominance, filled the galleries on either side. The junior aristocracy of the bar, for whom the circuits have few attractions, occupied the body of the court, while the multitude of King's counsel, in whom his Majesty scarcely finds a verification of the divine saying of Solomon, were arrayed along the benches, where it is their prerogative to sit, in the enjoyment of that leisure which the public so unfrequently disturb. The assembly looked exceedingly dejected and blank. A competition in sorrow appeared to have been got up, between the rival admirers of his Lordship, the Pharisees of Leeson, and the Sadducees of the Beef-Steak Club. "The Saints," however, from their habitual longitude of visage, and the natural alliance between their lugubrious devotion and despair, had a decided advantage over the statesmen of revelry and the legislators of song; and it was admitted on all hands, that Mr. M'Kaskey should yield the palm of condolence to a certain pious Serjeant, into whom the whole spirit of the prophet Jeremy appeared to have been infused. But the person most deserving of attention was Mr. Saurin. Lord Manners had been his intimate associate for twenty years. He had, upon his Lordship's first arrival in Ireland, pre-occupied his mind; he took advantage of his opportunities of access, and, having crept like an earwig into his audience, he at last effected a complete lodgment in his mind. Mr. Saurin established a masterdom over his faculties, and gave to all his passions the direction of his own. A very close intimacy grew up between them, which years of intercourse cemented into regard. They were seen every day walking together to the court. with that easy lounge which indicated the carelessness and equality of friendship. In one instance only had Lord Manners been wanting in fidelity to his companion. He had been commissioned to inform him, (at least, he was himself six months before apprised of the intended movement,) that Mr. Plunket would, in return for his services to the Administration, be raised to the office of Attorney-General for Ireland. Had Mr. Saurin been informed of this determination, he might have acted more wisely than he did, when in a fit of what his advocates have been pleased to call magnanimity, but which was nothing else than a paroxysm of offended arrogance, he declined the Chief Justiceship of the King's Bench! Lord Wellesley took him at his word, and gave him no opportunity to retrace his steps. He would not, at all events, have been taken unawares. Mr. Saurin is not conspicuous for his tendencies to forgiveness, but he pardoned the person in whose favour, of Feb. 1828.-VOL. XXII. NO. LXXXVI.

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