d forgive me for
using such a word! but the pit, Sir, you know the pit--they will do
those things in spite of merit. I remember this farce from a curious
circumstance. When Drury Lane was burnt to the ground, by which
accident Sheridan and his son lost the few remaining shillings they
were worth, what doth my friend D---- do? Why, before the fire was
out, he writes a note to Tom Sheridan, the manager of this combustible
concern, to enquire whether this farce was not converted into fuel,
with about two thousand other unactable manuscripts, which of course
were in great peril, if not actually consumed. Now was not this
characteristic?--the ruling passions of Pope are nothing to it. Whilst
the poor distracted manager was bewailing the loss of a building only
worth 300,000 _l._, together with some twenty thousand pounds of rags
and tinsel in the tiring rooms, Bluebeard's elephants, and all
that--in comes a note from a scorching author, requiring at his hands
two acts and odd scenes of a farce!!

"Dear H., remind Drury that I am his well-wisher, and let Scrope
Davies be well affected towards me. I look forward to meeting you at
Newstead, and renewing our old champagne evenings with all the glee of
anticipation. I have written by every opportunity, and expect
responses as regular as those of the liturgy, and somewhat longer. As
it is impossible for a man in his senses to hope for happy days, let
us at least look forward to merry ones, which come nearest to the
other in appearance, if not in reality; and in such expectations,

I remain," &c.

He was a good deal weakened and thinned by his illness at Patras, and,
on his return to Athens, standing one day before a looking-glass, he
said to Lord Sligo--"How pale I look!--I should like, I think, to die
of a consumption."--"Why of a consumption?" asked his friend. "Because
then (he answered) the women would all say, 'See that poor Byron--how
interesting he looks in dying!'" In this anecdote,--which, slight as
it is, the relater remembered, as a proof of the poet's consciousness
of his own beauty,--may be traced also the habitual reference of his
imagination to that sex, which, however he affected to despise it,
influenced, more or less, the flow and colour of all his thoughts.

He spoke often of his mother to Lord Sligo, and with a feeling that
seemed little short of aversion. "Some time or other," he said, "I
will tell you _why_ I feel thus towards her."--A few days after, w