Memoir of Francis Hodgson
Thomas Moore to Francis Hodgson, 25 April 1828
Sloperton Cottage: April 25, 1828.
My dear Hodgson,—I ought to have answered your letter long before
this, but the truth is, I have such shoals of epistolary stuff to get through
every morning (my chief literary labours, I think, being for the postman), that
I am tempted sometimes to presume upon the good nature of kind friends such as
you are, and ‘keep never minding you’ (as we say in Ireland) longer
than I should do. . . . My plan hitherto has been to extract from his journals,
or memorandum-books, such passages as related to the part of his life I was
detailing, and then omit them afterwards when I come to give the journal
itself. . . .
While in London, I had really not a moment for anything
beyond the immediate vortex I was ![]()
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whirling in. One day I was lucky enough to be able to dedicate to our friends
at Harrow, and you and Mrs. Hodgson were
not forgotten among our
άξιομνημόνευτα.
. . . While in town I saw your old acquaintance Harness, who has given me some very interesting letters of
B.’s.
Most truly yours,
William Harness (1790-1869)
A Harrow friend and early correspondent of Byron. He later answered the poet in
The Wrath of Cain (1822) and published an edition of Shakespeare
(1825) and other literary projects. Harness was a longtime friend of Mary Russell
Mitford.
Francis Hodgson (1781-1852)
Provost of Eton College, translator of Juvenal (1807) and close friend of Byron. He wrote
for the
Monthly and
Critical Reviews, and was
author of (among other volumes of poetry)
Childe Harold's Monitor; or
Lines occasioned by the last Canto of Childe Harold (1818).
Susanna Matilda Hodgson [née Tayler] (1791-1833)
Daughter of Archdale Wilson Tayler (1759-1814) who married Francis Hodgson in 1815. Her
sister Ann Caroline married Henry Drury and her sister Elizabeth married Robert
Bland.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the
Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and
Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.
