mb was a
promoter; the Countess of Besborough's, at whose house the Duke could
be seen; the Wimbledon country seat of Lord and Lady Spence; Belzoni, a
giant of six feet five, the center of a group of eager auditors of
the Egyptian marvels; Hallam, affable and unpretending, and a copious
talker; Gifford, a small, shriveled, deformed man of sixty, with
something of a humped back, eyes that diverge, and a large mouth,
reclining on a sofa, propped up by cushions, with none of the petulance
that you would expect from his Review, but a mild, simple, unassuming
man,--he it is who prunes the contributions and takes the sting out of
them (one would like to have seen them before the sting was taken out);
and Scott, the right honest-hearted, entering into the passing scene
with the hearty enjoyment of a child, to whom literature seems a sport
rather than a labor or ambition, an author void of all the petulance,
egotism, and peculiarities of the craft. We have Moore's authority for
saying that the literary dinner described in the "Tales of a Traveller,"
whimsical as it seems and pervaded by the conventional notion of the
relations of publishers and authors, had a personal foundation. Irving's
satire of both has always the old-time Grub Street flavor, or at least
the reminiscent tone, which is, by the way, quite characteristic of
nearly everything that he wrote about England. He was always a little
in the past tense. Buckthorne's advice to his friend is, never to be
eloquent to an author except in praise of his own works, or, what
is nearly as acceptable, in disparagement of the work of his
contemporaries. "If ever he speaks favorably of the productions of a
particular friend, dissent boldly from him; pronounce his friend to be
a blockhead; never fear his being vexed. Much as people speak of the
irritability of authors, I never found one to take offense at such
contradictions. No, no, sir, authors are particularly candid in
admitting the faults of their friends." At the dinner Buckthorne
explains the geographical boundaries in the land of literature: you
may judge tolerably well of an author's popularity by the wine his
bookseller gives him. "An author crosses the port line about the third
edition, and gets into claret; and when he has reached the sixth or
seventh, he may revel in champagne and burgundy." The two ends of the
table were occupied by the two partners, one of whom laughed at
the clever things said by the poet, while the