Admiralty favourites; but don't betray it or me; else you are the worst of men.

Is it like? if not, it has no merit. Does he deserve it? if not, burn it. He wrote to M[oore] (so M[oore] says) the other day, saying on some occasion, "what a fortunate fellow you are! surely you were born with a rose in your lips, and a Nightingale singing on the bed-top." M. sent me this extract as an instance of the old Serpent's sentimental twaddle. I replied, that I believed that "he (the twaddler) was born with a Nettle in his *, and a Carrion Crow croaking on the bolster," a parody somewhat undelicate; but such trash puts one stupid, besides the Cant of it in a fellow who hates every body. Is this good? tell me, and I will send you one still better of that blackguard Brougham; there is a batch of them.

(1820, September 28. Letter 831, to John Murray, Vol. V., p. 80.)

In the year 1812, more than three years after the publication of English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, I had the honour of meeting M' Bowles in the house of our venerable host of Human Life, etc., the last Argonaut of classic English poetry, and the Nestor of our inferior race of living poets.

(1821, February 7.

1st Letter to Murray on the Bowles-Pope controversy, Vol. V., p. 537.)

I hear that Rogers is not pleased with being called "venerable"-a pretty fellow: if I had thought that he would have been so absurd, I should have spoken

THE "VENERABLE" ROGERS ON HIS TRAVELS 361

of him as defunct-as he really is. Why, betwixt the years he really lived, and those he has been dead, Rogers has lived upon the Earth nearly seventy three years and upwards, as I have proved in a postscript of my letter, by this post, to M Kinnaird.

(1821, April 26. Letter 884, to John Murray, Vol. V., p. 270.)

I hope that we shall not have Mr Rogers here: there is a mean minuteness in his mind and tittletattle that I dislike, ever since I found him out (which was but slowly); besides he is not a good man: why don't he go to bed? What does he do travelling?

(1821, September 20, Ravenna. Letter 937, to John Murray, Vol. V., p. 372.)

I shall be (the Gods willing) in Bologna on Saturday next. This is a curious answer to your letter; but I have taken a house in Pisa for the winter, to which all my chattels-furniture, horses, carriages, and live stock-are already removed, and I am preparing to follow. . . If you will go on with me to Pisa, I can lodge you for as long as you like; (they write that the house, the Palazzo Lanfranchi, is spacious: it is on the Arno;) and I have four carriages, and as many saddle-horses (such as they are in these parts), with all other conveniences at your command, as also their owner. . . . It is better than a lustre (five years and six months and some days, more or less) since we met; and like the man from Tadcaster (in the farce Love Laughs at Locksmiths), whose acquaintances, including the cat and the terrier, "who caught a halfpenny in his mouth," were all

"gone dead", but too many of our acquaintances have taken the same path. Lady Melbourne, Grattan, Sheridan, Curran, etc., etc. - without reckoning the oi Todo-almost every body of much name of the old school. But "so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion; " therefore let us make the most of our remainder.

(1821, October 21. Letter 949, to Samuel Rogers, Vol. V., p. 394.)

When Sheridan was on his death-bed, Rogers aided him with purse and person: this was particularly kind in Rogers, who always spoke ill of Sheridan (to me at least); but indeed he does that of every-body to any body. Rogers is the reverse of the line "The best good man with the worst natured Muse,' being "The worst good man with the best natured Muse." His Muse being all Sentiment and Sago and Sugar, while he himself is a venomous talker. I say "worst good man," because he is (perhaps) a good man-at least he does good now and then, as well he may, to purchase himself a shilling's worth of Salvation for his Slanders. They are so little too-small talk, and old Womanny; and he is malignant too, and envious, and he be damned!

("Detached Thoughts," 1821-22. "Thought" 23, Vol. V., p. 420.)

At Bologna I met with Rogers, and we crossed the Apennines together-probably you have got him at Rome by this time. I took him to visit our old friend the sexton, at the Certosa, (where you and I met with Bianchetti), who looked at him very hard,

LE PÈRE PRODIGUE

363

and seemed well disposed to keep him back in his skull-room [cf. Chapter II. (2) Thoughts on Death and on Apparitions, 1819, June 7]... [Rogers] looks a little black still about being called "venerable," but he did not mention it. It was at his own request that I met him in the City of Sausages: he is not a bad traveller, but bilious.

(1821, November 20. Letter 961, to Douglas Kinnaird, Vol. V., p. 481.)

By the way, send me a copy of the MSS. lines on Samiel [Rogers], which were sent some years ago. I hear from Mr Hobhouse [who visited Byron at Pisa in September 1822] that he [i.e. Rogers] hath said something which is like him: it is time to teach him; and, if I take him in hand, I'll show him what he has been these sixty years.

Send me a copy of the lines.

(1822, September 23. Letter 1027, to John Murray, Vol. VI., p. 117.)

I shall not assail Rogers if he lets me alone; but it is a sad old fellow. I have lost the original copy, which made me send for this one, of which I shall not make any use.

(1822, October 24. Letter 1032, to John Murray, Vol. VI., p. 130.)

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Was not Sheridan good upon the whole? The "Poulterer" was the first and best.

(1813, May or June. Letter 295, to Thomas Moore, Vol. II., p. 212.)

I am in training to dine with Sheridan and Rogers this evening. I have a little spite against R., and will shed his "Clary wines pottle-deep."

(1813, July 28. Letter 316, to Thomas Moore, Vol. II., p. 239.)

Read Burns to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should have had more polishless force-just as much verse, but no immortality-a divorce and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been less spirituous, he might have lived as long as Sheridan, and outlived as much as poor Brinsley. What a wreck is that man! and all from bad pilotage; for no one had ever better gales, though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear Sherry! I shall never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed together; when he talked, and we listened, without one yawn, from six till one in the morning.

(1813, November 16. "Journal, 1813-14," Vol. II., p. 320.)

I have sent an excuse to Madame de Stael. I do not feel sociable enough for dinner to-day ;-and I will not go to Sheridan's on Wednesday. Not that I do not admire and prefer his unequalled conversation; but-that "but" must only be intelligible to thoughts I cannot write. Sheridan was in good talk at Rogers's the other night, but I only stayed till nine.

(1813, December 12. "Journal, 1813-14," Vol. II., p. 374.)