LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
Byron
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Reminiscences of a Literary Life
CHAP. II
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
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INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
CONTENTS
CHAP. I
SHELLEY
‣ CHAP. II
JOHN KEATS
THOMAS CAMPBELL
CHAP. III
GEORGE DOUGLAS
CHAP. IV
WILLIAM STEWART ROSE
CHAP. V
SAMUEL ROGERS
SAMUEL COLERIDGE
CHAP. VI
HARTLEY COLERIDGE
CHAP. VII
THOMAS MOORE
WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES
CHAP. VIII
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
JAMES MATHIAS
CHAP. IX
MISS MARTINEAU
WILLIAM GODWIN
CHAP. X
LEIGH HUNT
THOMAS HOOD
HORACE SMITH
CHAP. XI
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
MRS. JAMESON
JANE AND ANNA PORTER
CHAP. XII
TOM GENT
CHAP. XIII
VISCOUNT DILLON
SIR LUMLEY SKEFFINGTON
JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE
CHAP. XIV
LORD DUDLEY
LORD DOVER
CHAP. XV
SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE
WILLIAM BROCKEDON
CHAP. XVI
SIR ROBERT PEEL
SPENCER PERCEVAL
CHAP. XVII
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE
MR. DAVIS
CHAP. XVIII
ELIJAH BARWELL IMPEY
CHAP. XIX
ALEXANDER I.
GEORGE CANNING
NAPOLEON
QUEEN HORTENSE
ROSSINI
CHAP. XX
COUNT PECCHIO
MAZZINI
COUNT NIEMCEWITZ
CHAP. XXI
CARDINAL RUFFO
CHAP. XXII
PRINCESS CAROLINE
BARONNE DE FEUCHÈRES
CHAP. XXIII
SIR SIDNEY SMITH
CHAP. XXIV
SIR GEORGE MURRAY
CHAP. XXV
VISCOUNT HARDINGE
CHAP. XXVI
REV. C. TOWNSEND
CHAP. XXVII
BEAU BRUMMELL
CHAP. XXVIII
AN ENGLISH MERCHANT
THE BRUNELS
APPENDIX
INDEX
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CHAPTER II
JOHN KEATS

The enlightened British public never committed a greater mistake than in believing, on the rhymed “dixit” of Lord Byron, that John Keats’s “fiery particle” was snuffed out by a single Quarterly Review article. John was the man to stand whole broadsides of such articles, whether from Quarterly or Edinburgh, or from both, with a united and concentrated fire. Little in body, like Moore, he was, like Moore, thoroughly a man. He was one of the most cheery and plucky little fellows I ever knew; and though it may look like self-flattery, I think I may safely say that neither pluck nor fortitude always choose bulky frames and lofty statures for their lodging. Keats could hardly see a London street row without the impulsive wish to be in the midst of it; and in not a few rows he had his wish gratified. This was mere frolic and youthful love of mischief and excitement, or it was an innate love of fair-play; but I firmly believe that by the side of any friend Keats would have faced a battery, and would have stood under a shower of cannon-balls, chain-shot, canister or grape. Though he belonged to rather an affected school, at times a hectoring and pretentious school, poor Keats had an exceedingly small allowance of literary vanity. He would often say: “I have a notion that I have something in me, but that I shall never be able to bring it out. I feel all but sure that I never shall.” When dying, the motto he dictated for that tombstone, which his and
14JOHN KEATS [CHAP. II
my dear friend
Joseph Severn saw erected to his memory, was this: “Here lies one whose name is written in water.” Poor fellow! he died, not of an article, but of consumption, as an elder sister, and I think a brother, had done before him. When he first came to Naples, and even when he was proceeding thence to Rome, it was thought that he might rally, and even recover; but it was not to be. I loved some of Keats’s poems then, when I had not completed my twenty-first year, and I love them still, now that I am hastening to the conclusion of my fifty-seventh; but I rather think that what I most admired in Keats were his pluck and thorough abhorrence of what—after my friend Thomas Carlyle—we now call “shams.”

Late in the autumn of 1820, when he arrived at Naples, or rather at the commencement of the winter of that year, he was driving with my friend Charles Cottrell from the Bourbon Museum, up the beautiful open road which leads up to Capo di Monte and the Ponte Rossi. On the way, in front of a villa or cottage, he was struck and moved by the sight of some rose-trees in full bearing. Thinking to gratify the invalid, Cottrell, a ci-devant officer in the British Navy, jumped out of the carriage, spoke to somebody about the house or garden, and was back in a trice with a bouquet of roses.

“How late in the year! What an exquisite climate!” said the Poet; but on putting them to his nose, he threw the flowers down on the opposite seat, and exclaimed: “Humbugs! they have no scent! What is a rose without its fragrance? I hate and abhor all humbug, whether in a flower or in a man or woman!” And having worked himself strongly up in the anti-humbug humour, he cast the bouquet out on the road. I suppose that the flowers were China roses, which have little odour at any time, and hardly any at the approach of winter.

CHAP. II] CAMPBELL AND THE POLES 15

Returning from that drive, he had intense enjoyment in halting close to the Capuan Gate, and in watching a group of lazzaroni or labouring men, as, at a stall with fire and cauldron by the roadside in the open air, they were disposing of an incredible quantity of macaroni, introducing it in long, unbroken strings into their capacious mouths, without the intermediary of anything but their hands. “I like this,” said he; “these hearty fellows scorn the humbug of knives and forks. Fingers were invented first. Give them some carlini that they may eat more! Glorious sight! How they take it in!”

THOMAS CAMPBELL

My great intimacy with the poet began in the winter of 1829, and terminated rather suddenly in the autumn of 1832, in a quarrel, or rather in an offence he took at some remarks I hazarded on the Poles, their former history, and their late revolution. He bounced out of the house where we had been dining in a red-hot passion, telling our host that I had been talking about what I did not understand; that all the books I had quoted were false and fabulous; that Ruilhiere’s book on the anarchy of Poland was a perfect romance; that a history of Poland, upon national authorities, was yet to be compiled; and that, perhaps, he might write it. I was exceedingly sorry at this rupture, for notwithstanding sundry infirmities of temper, and not very agreeable irregularities of conduct and manners, I was disposed to cling to the man. I highly admired—no one more—the poetical genius he had displayed in early life; he was a Scotsman, nay more, he was all but a Highlander, claiming affinity with one of our noblest clans; he was my superior in learned accomplishments, and my senior by a good many years. With all this I could not be, and I am quite sure I was
16THOMAS CAMPBELL [CHAP. II
not, disrespectful or intemperate in my language or manner towards him. Seeing how widely we disagreed on the Polish question, I twice tried to change the subject, but he would not let me; he would go on to convince me against my will, or rather against my better judgment. The very next morning I sent our mutual Scottish friend, L. M., to sue for peace. “Tell him,” said I to the mediator, “that I beg his pardon, that I will never again dispute with him about Poland, that for all that I shall say to the contrary he may make demi-gods of all the Poles, applaud their elective monarchy system as the perfection of good government, and declare that no British Parliament was ever to be put in comparison with the Polish Diet held on horseback with drawn sabres, and that the most constitutional mode of disposing of a troublesome minority was to cut its throat or shoot it, as his admired Sarmatians had so often done.” The friendly mediation failed.
Tommy would not be pacified. During several more years we met rather frequently, at Miss G.’s, now Countess of H., at John Murray’s, at Longman’s, and at other places of resort, but he always gave me the cold shoulder, until one damp, cold, foggy morning I met him in the narrow part of Argyll Street, looking ill, seedy, and quite shaken. I was so affected by his altered appearance, that not without some fear of a rebuff, I crossed the street and addressed him. This time he held out his hand, and was quite gentle and even friendly. He told me that he had been ill, very ill, but that he thought of going over to France, and that would set him up. His remarkably fine dark eyes were still brilliant and flashing, though less so than formerly. We parted with cordial hand-shaking, and I never saw him again. When I related our brouillerie to W. S. Rose, he said: “Oh! I could have told you beforehand that if you got upon Polish ground with Campbell, a squabble would be the inevitable consequence. Tommy is a
CHAP. II]CAMPBELL AND THE POLES17
Polomaniac, and has been so ever since he wrote that famous line in the ‘
Pleasures of Hope’—‘And Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell’—not that there was much freedom in that land of serfs to shriek—and that line, and the few which precede it, have made him a sort of rallying-point, and an idol with all the Polish fugitives who get to England. These men flatter him and bedaub him with praise. Oh, how they do lay it on! But poor Campbell likes it—nay, he loves to be flattered and bedaubed. With the single exception of old ‘OberonSotheby and Lord Byron, I think he is about the vainest man I have known; but Byron had the good taste to love praise from the Laudati, and would very soon get impatient and angry at the compliments of nobodies, or at coarse, clumsy, vulgar laudation. I once told Campbell that when he went forth to walk through the streets he ought to have a barber’s pole carried before him, and that a barber’s pole ought always to project over his street-door. I wonder that he never catches the itch from some of his frowsy associates, for I am told that the itch is much more a national complaint in Poland than ever it was in Scotland. But let us return to good nature. I liked poor Campbell; I would give my left hand or both my ears to have written some of his best lyrics. Tell him I say so, and shake hands with him for me when you meet him, or when you make up this Highland feud.”

For a very long time I rarely met the Bard of Hope, in street, house, theatre, or elsewhere, without finding him attended by a longish Polish tail. From circumstances previously explained, he could not by any possibility take very many of his refugees into decent houses; but still he introduced a considerable number in good society, and among these were some who did no honour to his introduction. I remember being told that he was disquieted by a story about the mysterious disappearance of
18THOMAS CAMPBELL [CHAP. II
some silver spoons and forks, after a supper chez Madame ——, to which he had conducted some of his protégés.

The clear distinction necessary to be made between Upper Seymour Street and Lower Seymour Street will sufficiently explain Tommy’s convivial foibles. While our friendly league and covenant lasted, he would often come in upon me late at night. Often when we had dined together at John Murray’s, and each had taken more wine than he ought to have done, he would, at midnight, or even at a later hour, go home with me “to finish the evening,” as he facetiously called it. I was as yet a bachelor, living in very comfortable, choice apartments, in Berners Street, Oxford Street, in the house of good little Rolandi, the Italian bookseller, who allowed me the bachelor privilege of the latch-key, and always saw, before going to his own early bed, that my fire was in good burning order, and that my little comforts were at hand. “And now, Mac,” the bard would say—“now, Mac, for a glass of toddy! Your whisky is very good, and we will have a crack. Time was made for slaves.” Three or four times he remained till daylight, and twice he slept on a good broad sofa in my sitting-room, and stayed till twelve or one o’clock next day. Warned by what had happened to K. and B. S. L., I preferred accommodating him with a sofa to adventuring with him in a hackney coach, though I had a coach-stand conveniently near. I cannot plead the nocturnal water-drinking of poor Sir Walter, but I rather think that for one tumbler of toddy that I took, Campbell must have taken three. The worst of it—or at least a very bad part of it—was, that drink did not improve Tommy’s temper; it made him impatient, captious, and querulous, and at times violently passionate and uncommonly unpleasant.

So long as his poor wife lived, and they sojourned
CHAP. II]HIS PROPENSITIES19
in the cottage at Sydenham, he was kept in tolerable order; and was, on the whole, a douce, prudent, quiet-going bard. “You should have known him then,” said his very old Scottish friend, Mrs. E., “and you must not judge of him as he was then, by what you see of him now. From the day of his wife’s death, or at latest from the day when he got over his grief for her loss,
Tommy broke loose, and has never brought up since. It is a sad pity, for all we London-dwelling Scots honoured him and were so fond of him, and he might have done so well. One by one he has contrived to quarrel with or to annoy, beyond bearing, nearly all his old friends, whether Scottish or English. The last time he was in my house he broke the claret-jug and three glasses.”

I remember as one of Campbell’s characteristics that he could not bear to be, after dinner, in the same drawing-room with Moore, because the Irish minstrel sang his melodies and accompanied himself very sweetly on the piano, thus attracting much of the homage for which Campbell was so greedy, and absorbing all the attention of the company, of which he would fain have made a monopoly for himself. I have heard him very, very severe on Moore’s “Lalla Rookh,” and on his poetical style generally. He called it “washy,” a word he had taken from the vocabulary of his sometime close ally, Mrs. Siddons, the tragic actress, of whom, after her death, he wrote a very incorrect, “washy” Life. But I believe that of the said Life or Memoir, he himself, in reality, wrote very little.

The bard of “Hohenlinden” for many years wore a wig, of which mention will be found in my book of “Table Talk,” biography, and literary souvenirs. It was a wig not at all suited to his age and complexion; it was a fine black wig with Hyperion curls, and generally well oiled and perfumed. One
20THOMAS CAMPBELL [CHAP. II
night, after a very jovial dinner at old
John Murray’s, and while the claret-jugs were still in rapid circulation, Theodore Hook was called upon to sing one of his improvised songs. He was in “keff” and in vein; he sang three songs in succession, and really excelled himself. Campbell, considerably more than three-parts “fou,” went off into an ecstasy, and taking his wig off his head, he threw it across the table at Theodore, shouting, “There, you dog! Take my laurels! They are yours!”

The laughter was uproarious, and it did not cease until long after the elder bard had recovered his wig, and had covered his bald, shining pate. Washington Irving laughed until his sides ached, and then with a sly, demure face told Campbell that he had never before fancied that those poetical locks were not of his own growth. In those days—between 1829 and 1833—we had very frequently high jinks in Albemarle Street. Then, too, there was fat, jolly old bibliopole and opera man, old Andrews of Bond Street, who now and then gave a dinner to authors and wits, and gave it in good style, with champagne and claret à discrétion, or rather à indiscrétion. It was at one of this very fat man’s symposia that the author of the “Pleasures of Hope” so far exceeded limits that a hackney coach had to be sent for, and C. K. and B. S. L. were obliged to see him home.

Tommy was past speech, and Andrews, in giving his address, forgot to give the important word “Upper.” The coachman drove as directed; and then, descending from his box, gave a violent tug at the bell, and played an equally violent “rat-tattat” with the knocker. Presently the head of a man was projected from an attic window. “Who’s there?” cried he. “Mr. Campbell,” said C. “D—— Mr. Campbell!” cried the man. “This is the third time within a week that I have been knocked out
CHAP. II]UPPER SEYMOUR STREET21
of my bed in the middle of the night on his account. He lives in Upper Seymour Street. This is Lower Seymour Street!” He banged down the window, and the two friends conveyed their rather troublesome and quite unconscious charge to his own door.

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