match." To the verses, "When some brisk youth, the tenant of a stall,"
&c., he has appended the following interesting note:--"This was meant
at poor Blackett, who was then patronised by A.I.B.[104];--but _that_
I did not know, or this would not have been written; at least I think
not."

Farther on, where Mr. Campbell and other poets are mentioned, the
following gingle on the names of their respective poems is
scribbled:--

"Pretty Miss Jacqueline
Had a nose aquiline;
And would assert rude
Things of Miss Gertrude;
While Mr. Marmion
Led a great army on,
Making Kehama look
Like a fierce Mamaluke."

Opposite the paragraph in praise of Mr. Crabbe he has written, "I
consider Crabbe and Coleridge as the first of these times in point of
power and genius." On his own line, in a subsequent paragraph, "And
glory, like the phoenix mid her fires," he says, comically, "The devil
take that phoenix--how came it there?" and his concluding remark on
the whole poem is as follows:--

"The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had never been
written; not only on account of the injustice of much of the critical
and some of the personal part of it, but the tone and temper are such
as I cannot approve.

BYRON."

"Diodata, Geneva, July 14. 1816."

While engaged in preparing his new edition for the press, he was also
gaily dispensing the hospitalities of Newstead to a party of young
college friends, whom, with the prospect of so long an absence from
England, he had assembled round him at the Abbey, for a sort of
festive farewell. The following letter from one of the party, Charles
Skinner Matthews, though containing much less of the noble host
himself than we could have wished, yet, as a picture, taken freshly
and at the moment, of a scene so pregnant with character, will, I have
little doubt, be highly acceptable to the reader.

LETTER FROM CHARLES SKINNER MATTHEWS, ESQ. TO MISS I.M.

"London, May 22. 1809.

"My dear ----,

"I must begin with giving you a few particulars of the singular place
which I have lately quitted.

"Newstead Abbey is situate 136 miles from London,--four on this side
Mansfield. It is so fine a piece of antiquity, that I should think
there must be a description, and, perhaps, a picture of it in Grose.
The ancestors of its present owner came into possession of it at the
time of the dissolution of the monasteries,--but the building itself
is of a much e