s subsisted
but five years, and it is astonishing how much superior the worst of the
present collection are to the teaboard-looking things which first
appeared. John Thomson, of Duddingston, has far the finest picture in
the Exhibition, of a large size--subject _Dunluce_, a ruinous castle of
the Antrim family, near the Giant's Causeway, with one of those terrible
seas and skies which only Thomson can paint. Found Scrope there
improving a picture of his own, an Italian scene in Calabria. He is, I
think, greatly improved, and one of the very best amateur painters I
ever saw--Sir George Beaumont scarcely excepted. Yet, hang it, _I do_
except Sir George.

I would not write to-day after I came home. I will not say could not,
for it is not true; but I was lazy; felt the desire _far niente_, which
is the sign of one's mind being at ease. I read _The English in
Italy_,[161] which is a clever book.

Byron used to kick and frisk more contemptuously against the literary
gravity and slang than any one I ever knew who had climbed so high.
Then, it is true, I never knew any one climb so high; and before you
despise the eminence, carrying people along with you, as convinced that
you are not playing the fox and the grapes, you must be at the top.
Moore told me some delightful stories of him. One was that while they
stood at the window of Byron's Palazzo in Venice, looking at a beautiful
sunset, Moore was naturally led to say something of its beauty, when
Byron answered in a tone that I can easily conceive, "Oh! come, d--n me,
Tom, don't be poetical." Another time, standing with Moore on the
balcony of the same Palazzo, a gondola passed with two English
gentlemen, who were easily distinguished by their appearance. They cast
a careless look at the balcony and went on. Byron crossed his arms, and
half stooping over the balcony said, "Ah! d--n ye, if ye had known what
two fellows you were staring at, you would have taken a longer look at
us." This was the man, quaint, capricious, and playful, with all his
immense genius. He wrote from impulse, never from effort; and therefore
I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetical
geniuses of my time, and half a century before me. We have, however,
many men of high poetical talent, but none, I think, of that
ever-gushing and perennial fountain of natural water.

Mr. Laidlaw dined with us. Says Mr. Gibson told him he would dispose of
my affairs, were it any but S.W.S.[162] No do