of
greatness."

* * * *

"I was much struck with the simplicity of Grattan's manners in private
life; they were odd, but they were natural. Curran used to take him off,
bowing to the very ground, and 'thanking God that he had no
peculiarities of gesture or appearance,' in a way irresistibly
ludicrous; and * * used to call him a 'Sentimental Harlequin.'"

* * * *

"Curran! Curran's the man who struck me most[102]. Such imagination!
there never was any thing like it that ever I saw or heard of. His
_published_ life--his published speeches, give you _no_ idea of the
man--none at all. He was a _machine_ of imagination, as some one said
that Piron was an epigrammatic machine.

"I did not see a great deal of Curran--only in 1813; but I met him at
home (for he used to call on me), and in society, at Mackintosh's,
Holland House, &c. &c. and he was wonderful even to me, who had seen
many remarkable men of the time."

* * * *

"* * * (commonly called _long_ * * *, a very clever man, but odd)
complained of our friend Scrope B. Davies, in riding, that he had a
_stitch_ in his side. 'I don't wonder at it,' said Scrope, 'for you ride
_like a tailor_.' Whoever had seen * * * on horseback, with his very
tall figure on a small nag, would not deny the justice of the repartee."

* * * *

"When B * * was obliged (by that affair of poor M * *, who thence
acquired the name of 'Dick the Dandy-killer'--it was about money, and
debt, and all that) to retire to France, he knew no French, and having
obtained a grammar for the purpose of study, our friend Scrope Davies
was asked what progress Brummell had made in French; he responded, 'that
Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the Elements.'

"I have put this pun into Beppo, which is 'a fair exchange and no
robbery; for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners (as he owned
himself) by repeating occasionally, as his own, some of the buffooneries
with which I had encountered him in the morning."

* * * *

"* * * is a good man, rhymes well (if not wisely), but is a bore. He
seizes you by the button. One night of a rout, at Mrs. Hope's, he had
fastened upon me, notwithstanding my symptoms of manifest distress, (for
I was in love, and had just nicked a minute when neither mothers, nor