Memoir of Francis Hodgson
John Herman Merivale to Francis Hodgson, [May 1836]
To-day I dine with Hallam, much renowned for Greek, for the purpose of meeting
Wordsworth the poet (not the
master), and Benson of the Temple. I
wish you were a fifth. To-morrow I ordain (as ![]()
| 226 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. | |
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we say in
the West) to go and see Ion, 1 though I
cannot by any possibility fancy Macready
as the youthful devotee and enthusiast. Surely none but a woman can both act
and look the character. Madame Malibran
should have it.
As to public affairs, it requires no great share of political
sapience to pronounce that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. The action is, it seems, proceeding and expected to
proceed, and even Lord John thinks discretion the better
part of valour, and refuses to march through Coventry with the Irish beggars in
their way to rebellion. Degraded indeed we are if suck a domination as we have
lived under (at least nominally) for the last twelvemonth can endure for
another similar period.
The bon-mot ascribed to Lord
M. in last Sunday’s ‘John Bull’ strikes me as irresistibly
funny—that, being asked how he liked his present Chancellor, as compared with Brougham, he answered, ‘Much like a man who has discarded
a capricious mistress, to marry his housekeeper.’
I had a batch of my neighbour
Barnwell’s music last evening, and longed for
you to enjoy it with me.
Christopher Benson (1788-1868)
Evangelical writer educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; he was canon of
Worcester and author of
A Chronology of our Saviour's Life
(1819).
Henry Peter Brougham, first baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868)
Educated at Edinburgh University, he was a founder of the
Edinburgh
Review in which he chastised Byron's
Hours of Idleness; he
defended Queen Caroline in her trial for adultery (1820), established the London University
(1828), and was appointed lord chancellor (1830).
John Singleton Copley, baron Lyndhurst (1772-1863)
The son of the American painter; he did legal work for John Murray before succeeding Lord
Eldon as lord chancellor (1827-30, 1834-35, 1841-46); a skilled lawyer, he was also a
political chameleon.
Henry Hallam (1777-1859)
English historian and contributor to the
Edinburgh Review, author
of
Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 4 vols (1837-39) and
other works. He was the father of Tennyson's Arthur Hallam.
Maria Felicia Malibran (1808-1836)
Born in Paris; opera singer who made her debut in London in 1825 performing in Rossini's
Barber of Seville; she died of a riding accident in
Manchester.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
John Bull. (1820-1892). A scurrilous Tory weekly newspaper edited by Theodore Hook.
