n I know not what
coffee-house in the Strand--and what do you think was the attraction?
Why, that he paid a shilling (I think) to _dine with his hat on_. This
he called his '_hat_ house,' and used to boast of the comfort of being
covered at meal-times.

"When Sir Henry Smith was expelled from Cambridge for a row with a
tradesman named 'Hiron,' Matthews solaced himself with shouting under
Hiron's windows every evening,

"'Ah me! what perils do environ
The man who meddles with _hot Hiron_.'

"He was also of that band of profane scoffers who, under the auspices
of ----, used to rouse Lort Mansel (late Bishop of Bristol) from his
slumbers in the lodge of Trinity; and when he appeared at the window
foaming with wrath, and crying out, 'I know you, gentlemen, I know
you!' were wont to reply, 'We beseech thee to hear us, good
_Lort_'--'Good _Lort_ deliver us!' (Lort was his Christian name.) As
he was very free in his speculations upon all kinds of subjects,
although by no means either dissolute or intemperate in his conduct,
and as I was no less independent, our conversation and correspondence
used to alarm our friend Hobhouse to a considerable degree.

"You must be almost tired of my packets, which will have cost a mint
of postage.

"Salute Gifford and all my friends.

"Yours, &c."

As already, before his acquaintance with Mr. Matthews commenced, Lord
Byron had begun to bewilder himself in the mazes of scepticism, it
would be unjust to impute to this gentleman any further share in the
formation of his noble friend's opinions than what arose from the
natural influence of example and sympathy;--an influence which, as it
was felt perhaps equally on both sides, rendered the contagion of
their doctrines, in a great measure, reciprocal. In addition, too, to
this community of sentiment on such subjects, they were both, in no
ordinary degree, possessed by that dangerous spirit of ridicule, whose
impulses even the pious cannot always restrain, and which draws the
mind on, by a sort of irresistible fascination, to disport itself most
wantonly on the brink of all that is most solemn and awful. It is not
wonderful, therefore, that, in such society, the opinions of the noble
poet should have been, at least, accelerated in that direction to
which their bias already leaned; and though he cannot be said to have
become thus confirmed in these doctrines,--as neither now, nor at any
time of his life, was he a confirmed unbe