crites. I have dwelt longer on this theme than I intended, and I shall now conclude with what I ought to have begun. We were once friends,-nay, we have always been so, for our separation was the effect of chance, not of dissension. I do not know how far our destinations in life may throw us together, but if opportunity and inclination allow you to waste a thought on such a harebrained being as myself, you will find me at least sincere, and not so bigoted to my faults as to involve others in the consequences. Will you sometimes write to me? I do not ask it often; and if we meet, let us be what we should be, and what we were.'-(MOORE.)

In a letter to Moore, written after Byron's death, Harness gives this pleasant and particular account of their friendship:-'A coolness afterwards arose, which Byron alludes to in the first of the accompanying letters, and we never spoke during the last year of his remaining at school, nor till after the publication of his Hours of Idleness. Lord Byron was then at Cambridge; I, in one of the upper forms at Harrow. In an English theme I happened to quote from the volume, and mention it with praise. It was reported to Byron that I had, on the contrary, spoken slightingly of his work and of himself, for the purpose of conciliating the favour of Dr. Butler, the master, who had been severely satirised in one of the poems. Wingfield, who was afterwards Lord Powerscourt, a mutual friend of Byron and myself, disabused him of the error into which he had been led, and this was the occasion of the first letter of the collection. Our intimacy was renewed, and continued from that time till his going abroad. Whatever faults Lord Byron might have had towards others, to myself he was always uniformly affectionate. I have many slights and neglects towards him to reproach myself with; but I cannot call to mind a single instance of caprice or unkindness, in the whole course of our friendship, to allege against him.'

In effect, Harness was one of the friends whose portraits Byron had painted by Sanders ere his departure for the East. He remembered the Harrow days so well that at Rogers's table he was able to quote to Moore, who was then (1828-29) engaged upon the Life and Letters, such a 'strain of unpremeditated art' as this of Byron's, 'roared out' at a schoolmate who was a violent Bonapartist :

Bold Robert Speer was Bony's bad precursor.

Bob was a bloody dog, but Bonaparte a worser.

He visited at Newstead in 1812, when Byron was correcting the

proofs of the First and Second Harold. There he met Francis Hodgson (see post, p. 319, Note to Letter xxxv.), who was 'at work in getting out the ensuing number of The Monthly Review,' and for three weeks-weeks of late hours at both ends of the day-'the general talk was of poets and poetry, and who could or who could not write,' though it occasionally strayed into very serious discussions on religion' (see Note to Letter xxxv., ut sup.). In due course Harness took orders and a country curacy; but Byron was never afraid of the cloth-(conspicuous among his early friends are Becher, Harness, Hodgson, and Drury, parsons all)—and the intimacy continued unimpaired till 1816 and the Exile, after which it died a natural death. Harness, a person of elegant taste, had always found Byron's poetry 'a little too "strong" for him' ; being Boyle Lecturer at Cambridge, he took occasion to speak of Cain as he thought it deserved; and two years after came the end. But though he found Byron's Venetian life still 'stronger' than Byron's poetry, he never ceased from being Byron's champion; and the few pages in which he discusses the Marriage, and the Separation, and the Characters of the parties thereto, are uncompromisingly Byronian, at the same time that they are sane and liberal enough to make you wish that he had written many more.

For the rest, he lived an active, blameless, useful life: as minister (1825) of Regent Square Chapel, St. Pancras, where he stayed for twenty years; as Morning Preacher at Trinity Chapel, Conduit Street, and Minister and Evening Lecturer at St. Ann's, Soho ; and as Minister of Brompton Chapel, in which capacity he compassed the building of All Souls', Knightsbridge. He edited Shakespeare and Massinger, wrote much for Blackwood, and published a certain amount of timid, unexceptionable verse. Moreover, being extremely popular as a preacher, and withal 'a gentleman of the Old School,' he went everywhere and saw everybody. His lifelong friend (they knew each other as babies) was Mary Russell Mitford, whose Life he lived to write; but Sir Walter, Crabbe, Rogers, Sydney Smith, the Kembles, the Derbys, the Lansdownes, Daniel Webster, Washington Irving, the Berrys, Lydia White, Father Mathew, Talfourd, Joanna Baillie, Milman, Dickens, Thackeray, Crabb Robinson-at one or the other time he knew them all. In the end, being very old, he fell down a stone stair in the Deanery at Battle, and was taken up dead.

His Literary Life (1871) was written by the Rev. A. G. Lestrange, his collaborator in The Life of Mary Russell Mitford. I am indebted to it for the substance of this Note.

LETTER XXviii. p. 39.

A most violent attack:-The fainous criticism in The Edinburgh Review, which Byron always attributed to Brougham, and which Mr. Jeaffreson believes to have been the work of an incensed don. It is printed (Vol. v.) as an Appendix to English Bards.

The partisans of Lord Holland and Co. :-That is, the Edinburgh Reviewers acknowledged no merit anywhere save in a Whig. Henry Richard Vassall Holland, Third Baron, a nephew of Charles James Fox (1773-1840), was educated at Eton and Oxford. In 1797 he married Elizabeth Vassall, the divorced wife of Sir Godfrey Webster, to whom he had already paid £6000 damages as defendant in an action for crim. con. The constant protector of all oppressed races and persecuted sects' (MACAULAY), he did good work against the Slave Trade, the Corn Laws, and the Criminal Code; took the other side in the matter of the War and the isolation of Napoleon; and served on the Ministries of Earl Grey and Lord Melbourne. Also, he wrote gracefully about Spanish literature and his uncle Fox, and edited the Waldegrave Memoirs. A good talker, a capital mimic, an engaging and accomplished host, to Sheridan he is the only public man I have any attachment for'; his Holland House parties are historical; and in 1833 Ticknor 'cannot help agreeing with Scott that he is the most agreeable man I have ever met,' the reason being that 'to the great resources of his knowledge be adds a laissez-aller, arising from his remarkable good-nature which is irresistible.' Of Lord Holland in Parliament, Holcroft, writing in 1799, remarks that 'He has not sufficient vehemence of feeling to become a man of genius'; while to Byron (1813) he is 'impressive from sense and sincerity. As we shall see, he believed himself justified in what he writes to Becher, and in the Text and Notes of English Bards he trounced the Holland House set with all the strength that was in him. Afterwards, being convinced of his error, he was on excellent terms with Lord Holland, to whom he was introduced by Rogers, and to whom he dedicated The Bride of Abydos (1813), With Every Sentiment of Regard and Respect.'

PAYNE KNIGHT :-Richard Payne Knight (Phallus Knight,' as Walpole calls him) wrote The Landscape (1794); The Progress of Civil Society (1796); An Account of the Remains of the Warship of Priapus, etc. (1796); and Carmina Homerica (1808-20). His verse and his theories are parodied in the Twenty-first Anti-Jacobin :

There laughs the sky, there Zephyr's frolic train,

And light-winged loves, and blameless pleasures reign:

There where two souls congenial ties unite,

No hireling Bonzes chant the mystic rite.

There in each grove, each sloping bank along,

And flowers, and shrubs, and odorous herbs among, etc.

He was born in 1750, and on his death in 1824 he bequeathed to the British Museum a collection of bronzes, gems, and coins valued at £30,000 to £60,000.

LETTER XXIX. p. 40.

Pratt, the gleaner, author, poet, etc. :-This was Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749-1814). Born at St. Ives (Bucks), he began, it appears, as a parson, but, getting into trouble over women, and quarrelling with his parents, he turned actor, playing under the noble name of Courtney Melmoth in Dublin, and failing (1774) at Covent Garden in Hamlet and in Philaster. After this he took to scribbling-still as Courtney Melmoth; went into partnership (c. 1776) with a Bath bookseller named Clinch; and coming to London some time afterwards, fell in with Wolcot, Beattie, Colman, and Æschylus Potter, and took so valiantly to scribbling prose and verse that three columns of the British Museum Catalogue are filled with the titles of his works: among them Sympathy: a Poem (1788), of which there were four editions within the year, and eleven by 1807; The Pupils of Pleasure (1776), translated into French and German, and abused as 'licentious'; The Fair Circassian (1781), a play which, as acted by Miss Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby, went through three editions within the year; and Gleanings in England (1799), which is trounced in a letter by Charles Lamb. He is best remembered as the discoverer of Blackett, the cobbler-bard, of whom he published Specimens in 1809 and the Remains in 1811. In the MS. of English Bards Pratt is thus presented :—

In verse most stale, unprofitable, flat,

Come let us change the scene and 'glean' with Pratt;

In him an author's luckless lot behold,

Condemned to make the books which once he sold:

Degraded Man! again resume thy trade

The votaries of the Muse are ill-repaid,

Though daily puffs once more invite to buy

A new edition of thy Sympathy.

But the engaging Dallas, who was a personal friend, prevailed upon the writer to suppress his verses, together with a rider in prose - Mr. Pratt, once a Bath bookseller, now a London author, has written as much, to as little purpose, as any of his

scribbling contemporaries. Mr. P.'s Sympathy is in rhyme; but his prose productions are the most voluminous.'

Hanson, my agent:-Hanson's first (published) appearance in Byron's history is as his client's escort to Dr. Glennie's school at Dulwich. According to Mrs. Leigh, there was talk (c. 1818) of taking Byron's affairs out of his hands; but nothing came of it, and in 1824 he went with Hobhouse to Doctors Commons for the proving of Byron's will. A series of early letters, from Byron to Hanson, which I regret that I cannot publish, shows the pair to have been on familiar, even friendly terms.

Hanson's eldest daughter-'Mary Anne (a good girl),' B.— married the Earl of Portsmouth (7th March 1814), when Byron gave away the bride. In 1828 the Earl was declared non compos mentis at the time of the marriage, and it was dissolved. (See post, Letter to Lady —, 28 March 1823.)

My Lancashire property:-See ante, p. 301, Note to Letter viii. Hanson was ever for the sale of Newstead, Byron as steadily against it. But in 1818 Mrs. Leigh writes to Hodgson that 'Mr. Hanson has lately returned from Venice, having been there to sign and seal away our dear, lamented Abbey.'

LETTER XXX. p. 42.

Beside Mr. Hobhouse:-See post, p. 321, Note to Letter xxxv. The 'Revenge' :-Young's tragedy (1721), in which Byron loved to enact the part of the impassioned Zanga.

LETTER XXXI. p. 42.

Dear Jack:-John Jackson (1759-1845), better known as Gentleman Jackson, 'Sole Prop and Ornament of Pugilism' (Moore), Champion of England from 1795 to 1803, when he retired. The son of that London builder, 'by whom the arch was thrown over the old Fleet Ditch,' Jackson was backed by Harvey Combe, Lord Mayor, and four times member for the City of London, and fought no more than thrice in the Ring :-in 1788, when he beat Fewteral of Birmingham at Smithson Bottom, near Croydon, in the presence of the Prince of Wales; in 1789, when he was beaten by the Brewer of Ingleston, who threw him so heavily as to dislocate his ankle and break the small bone of an arm; and in 1795, when at Hornchurch, Essex, he beat the renowned Mendoza in ten and a half minutes. Yet for over thirty years he was the most picturesque and commanding figure in the sporting world, and exercised an influence unique in its annals. The truth is, he was a vast deal more than an accomplished boxer and teacher of boxing and a brilliant all