1812 was made a baronet, John Cam Hobhouse was born at For modern worthies who would hope to rise : Thus Bowles may triumph o'er the shade of Pope ': and in 1809, he published a certain miscellany-(Skinner Matthews, with whom, as his most intimate friend, he was very often at variance, used to call it the Miss-sell-any)—of Imitations and Translations from the Antient and Modern Classics; Together with Original Poems Never Before Published. But from Falmouth onward, despite the desperate terms in which Byron presents him : he appears to have left rhyme to his friend; for he set forth the results of their expedition, as he perceived them, in a solid volume of stout and serviceable prose. This was the book now known as Travels in Albania, Roumelia, and Other Provinces of Turkey (1812), which went into a Second Edition in a year or so, and was reprinted in 1855. A constant guest at Newstead, he was present (as best man) at the Marriage (2nd January 1815: it was to him that the bride addressed the often-quoted 'If I am not happy, it will be my own fault'); and he served his friend most loyally through those troubled and desperate days which preceded the Exile (25th April 1816). In the summer of the same year he joined that friend at Diodati; and some circumstances of their life are set forth in the Swiss Journal--(addressed to Augusta Leigh)-extracts from which were published by Moore. (It was at this time that, as he tells you at the very outset of his Italy (1859), he saw Byron 'deface with great care' the 'atheist and philanthropist written in Greek,' which Shelley had inscribed after his own name in an inn-album.) In 1817, after a round of travel, he rejoined Byron at La Mira, and found him deep in the Fourth Harold. 'It'-the first draft-'was much shorter than it afterwards became, and it did not remark on several objects which appeared to me peculiarly worthy of notice. I made a list of these objects, and, in conversation with him, gave him reasons for the selection. The result was the poem as it now appears, and he then engaged me to write notes for the whole canto.' Most of this work was done at Venice-'where I had the advantage of consulting the Ducal Library'; and in the sequel the commentary grew to so great a bulk that only a part could be attached to the poem, the rest of it being published separately (Historical Illustrations to the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold'; Containing Dissertations on the Ruins of Rome, and an Essay on Italian Literature, London, 1818). Byron's regard for the writer was instantly attested by his Dedication (2nd January 1818) of his magnificent achievement to one whom I have known long and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril-to a friend often tried and never found wanting-to' John Cam Hobhouse, already (1816) the dedicatee of The Siege of Corinth. There was another meeting (at Pisa) in 1822. These were the years of Cain, the Vision, the Juan (Hobhouse was one of that 'cursed puritanical committee' which on moral grounds objected to the publication of this last), Missolonghi; and then, in the July of 1824, he, as Byron's intimate and executor, took a boat, and boarded the Florida in Sandgate Creek. 'Three dogs' (he writes) 'that had belonged to my friend were playing on the deck. I could hardly bear to look at them. . . . I cannot describe what I felt during the five or six hours of our passage. I was the last person who shook hands with Byron when he left England in 1816. I recollected his waving his cap to me, as the packet bounded off on a curling wave, from the pier-head at Dover, and here I was now coming back to England with his corpse.' It was John Murray, not Hobhouse himself, who, writing in Hobhouse's name and without Hobhouse's instructions, was politely snubbed by Dean Ireland in the matter of a place for Byron in the Abbey among his peers. But Hobhouse was responsible for all the other circumstances of the obsequies: from the disembarkation of the coffin at the London Docks Buoy-('There were many boats round the ship. . . and the shore was crowded with spectators')—and the passage of the barge to Westminster Stairs, to the deposition in the little church at Hucknall Torkard, which, with the churchyard, was 'so crowded that we could scarcely follow the body up the aisle.' ('I was told,' he adds, that the place was crowded till a late hour in the evening, and that the vault was not closed till the next morning.) When he left Hucknall Torkard the Corporation of Nottingham offered him the freedom of the city; but I had no inclination for the ceremonies with which the acceptance of the honour,' etc., and 'I therefore declined it.' And his work as Byron's friend and champion was in nowise done when he turned his back upon Hucknall Churchyard. With his share in the destruction of the MS. of Byron's Memoir, as with his action in defence of Byron's reputation in 1830-31, it will be convenient to deal elsewhere. In this place I shall but sketch his part in that very scandalous incident in the story of Westminster Abbey-the closing of its doors upon the effigies of perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most famous, Englishman of his generation. Hobhouse, then, was largely instrumental in forming a Committee, and in procuring subscriptions, for the erection of a memorial to Byron; and among those associated with him to this end were Goethe, Scott, Campbell, Rogers, Moore, Malcolm, Lockhart, Bowles, Mackintosh, Jeffrey, Stratford Canning, Charles Kemble, Isaac Disraeli, and Peel; with Lords Holland, Sligo, Lansdowne, Cowper, Normanby, Nugent, and Dudley, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Earl and Countess of Jersey. At Hobhouse s suggestion the work was undertaken by Thorwaldsen, for so small a sum as a thousand pounds. But Dean Ireland refused the Poet's statue, as he had barred out the Poet's body; and it lay at the Custom House, unpacked, for many years. Dr. Ireland was succeeded in 1842 by Dr. Turton, afterwards Bishop of Ely; Byron's right to a place in Poets' Corner was denied by Dr. Turton, as twice before by Dr. Ireland; his denial was applauded by the then Bishop of London (Blomfield) in his place in the House of Lords; and Hobhouse replied to his Lordship (1844) in a pamphlet, privately printed, but reproduced as an appendix to Travels in Albania, which is excellent reading still. It was to no purpose. The Abbey doors are closed on Byron yet; and the Thorwaldsen, after nearly half a century of seclusion, was at last accepted by Master Whewell (largely at the instance of the Messrs. De la Pryme) for the Library of Byron's old college, whence it is not likely to be removed. 'A man,' says Byron, 'of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honour': a man, as we can see, of singular alertness of mind, energy of temperament, integrity of purpose, and strength of character and will: Hobhouse is honourably remembered, apart from the friendship which is his title to enduring fame, as an influential politician, and as a diligent, adroit, and faithful servant of the State. An original Radical and Reformer, he began, being one of the Rota Club, by getting committed to Newgate for a breach of privilege; went on to be elected (with Burdett) for Westminster, which he represented for thirteen years; was Secretary for War, Chief Secretary for Ireland, Commissioner for Woods and Forests, and twice President of the Board of Control; and in 1857 was raised to the Peerage as Lord Broughton de Gyfford. Ere he died, he found energy enough to write the five volumes of his Memoirs of a Long Life. They are printed, but not published; but they are partially known through an Edinburgh review (April 1871), the work, it is understood, of the late Henry Reeve, to which I am indebted for certain facts and extracts embodied in this Note. LETTER XXXvi. p. 47. The Arch-Fiend s'name:-Francis Jeffrey, Editor of The Edinburgh Review. As to the 'real orthodoxy of that name,' I know nothing. 'Bloody Jefferies.' The Carnifex of James II. :—' Hardwicke (where Mary was confined) :—Hodgson was at this time deep in what he called 'a poem' on the subject of Mary Queen of Scots. You do not tell me if Gifford, etc. :-William Gifford (1757-1826) -'the asp, Gifford,' as Mr. Swinburne calls him-began life as a shoemaker's apprentice; had an extremely arduous and difficult youth; raised himself to eminence and authority by sheer force of character and intelligence-both limited and in some sort vitiated, no doubt, but both indomitable and real; and, having edited The Anti-Jacobin (1797-98), was made Editor of the Quarterly, on its establishment in 1809. He did good service to literature in The Baviad (1794), The Mæviad (1795), The Epistle to Peter Pindar (1800)-(in the two first he utterly annihilated the silly set of poetasters known as the Della-Cruscans; and in the second he checked the insolence of as bold and hard-hitting a ruffian as the journalism of the time could boast)—and, especially, in his editions of Massinger (1805), Jonson (1816), and Ford (1827), which contain much sound work, and set forth the results of wide reading and the operations of a clear, vigorous, clever, and less prejudiced than narrow mind. Also his Juvenal (1802) has a certain spiteful merit, but is not much read now. For his literary temper was atrocious; his criticisms, whether aggressive or corrective, seem the effect of downright malignity; in the long-run you are tempted to side with his victims. Byron, however, was always a 'fervent' of Pope; to Byron Gifford represented the Pope tradition at its best; for Gifford Byron entertained an immense (and very fatuous) respect (I have always considered him,' he writes to Murray a very little while before his death, 'as my literary father, and myself as his "prodigal son"'); Byron was ever ready to submit himself to Gifford's judgment; and to Gifford Byron 'gave carte blanche to strike out or alter anything at his pleasure in The Siege of Corinth' as it was passing through the press. Monstrous though it seem to us now, in fact, this alliance between Leviathan and a blind-worm (so to speak) was genuine, and the sincerity of neither party to it can be impugned. At the date of the present letter it was merely onesided; for Gifford scarce recked at all of Byron's existence, and Byron himself was only the poet of a lot of juvenilia. But it was already possible, by reason of Byron's simplicity and good faith; and in a very few years it became a rather potent fact. LETTER XXXvii. p. 49. Tell D'Egville his dress shall be returned:-James H. D'Egville was appointed Acting-Manager and Director of the Opera by Mr. Taylor (5th October 1807), and removed by the decree of arbitration signed by Lord Headfort and Mr. William Ogilvie (January |