hing admirably, but then he would be applauded for
the same thing twice over. He would read his own verses, his own
paragraph, and tell his own story again and again; and then the 'Trial
by Jury!!!' I almost wished it abolished, for I sat next him at dinner.
As I had read his published speeches, there was no occasion to repeat
them to me.

"C * * (the fox-hunter), nicknamed '_Cheek_ C * *,' and I, sweated the
claret, being the only two who did so. C * *, who loves his bottle, and
had no notion of meeting with a 'bon-vivant' in a scribbler[50], in
making my eulogy to somebody one evening, summed it up in--'By G----d he
drinks like a man.'

"Nobody drank, however, but C * * and I. To be sure, there was little
occasion, for we swept off what was on the table (a most splendid board,
as may be supposed, at Jersey's) very sufficiently. However, we carried
our liquor discreetly, like the Baron of Bradwardine."

[Footnote 49: A review, somewhat too critical, of some of the guests is
here omitted.]

[Footnote 50: For the first day or two, at Middleton, he did not join
his noble host's party till after dinner, but took his scanty repast of
biscuits and soda water in his own room. Being told by somebody that the
gentleman above mentioned had pronounced such habits to be "effeminate,"
he resolved to show the "fox-hunter" that he could be, on occasion, as
good a _bon-vivant_ as himself, and, by his prowess at the claret next
day, after dinner, drew forth from Mr. C * * the eulogium here
recorded.]

* * * * *

In the month of August this year, on the completion of the new Theatre
Royal, Drury Lane, the Committee of Management, desirous of procuring an
Address for the opening of the theatre, took the rather novel mode of
inviting, by an advertisement in the newspapers, the competition of all
the poets of the day towards this object. Though the contributions that
ensued were sufficiently numerous, it did not appear to the Committee
that there was any one among the number worthy of selection. In this
difficulty it occurred to Lord Holland that they could not do better
than have recourse to Lord Byron, whose popularity would give additional
vogue to the solemnity of their opening, and to whose transcendant
claims, as a poet, it was taken for granted, (though without sufficient
allowance, as it proved, for the irritability of the brotherhood,) even
the rejected candidates themselves would bow without