just and animated
tribute to Mr. Crabbe was also among the after-thoughts with which his
poem was adorned; nor can we doubt that both this, and the equally
merited eulogy on Mr. Rogers, were the disinterested and deliberate
result of the young poet's judgment, as he had never at that period
seen either of these distinguished persons, and the opinion he then
expressed of their genius remained unchanged through life. With the
author of the Pleasures of Memory he afterwards became intimate, but
with him, whom he had so well designated as "Nature's sternest
painter, yet the best," he was never lucky enough to form any
acquaintance;--though, as my venerated friend and neighbour, Mr.
Crabbe himself, tells me, they were once, without being aware of it,
in the same inn together for a day or two, and must have frequently
met, as they went in and out of the house, during the time.

Almost every second day, while the Satire was printing, Mr. Dallas,
who had undertaken to superintend it through the press, received fresh
matter, for the enrichment of its pages, from the author, whose mind,
once excited on any subject, knew no end to the outpourings of its
wealth. In one of his short notes to Mr. Dallas, he says, "Print soon,
or I shall overflow with rhyme;" and it was, in the same manner, in
all his subsequent publications,--as long, at least, as he remained
within reach of the printer,--that he continued thus to feed the
press, to the very last moment, with new and "thick-coming fancies,"
which the re-perusal of what he had already written suggested to him.
It would almost seem, indeed, from the extreme facility and rapidity
with which he produced some of his brightest passages during the
progress of his works through the press, that there was in the very
act of printing an excitement to his fancy, and that the rush of his
thoughts towards this outlet gave increased life and freshness to
their flow.

Among the passing events from which he now caught illustrations for
his poem was the melancholy death of Lord Falkland,--a gallant, but
dissipated naval officer, with whom the habits of his town life had
brought him acquainted, and who, about the beginning of March, was
killed in a duel by Mr. Powell. That this event affected Lord Byron
very deeply, the few touching sentences devoted to it in his Satire
prove. "On Sunday night (he says) I beheld Lord Falkland presiding at
his own table in all the honest pride of hospitality; on Wedne