August 19.—What a pleasant evening I have spent with my dear friends the Hamilton Rowans. Captain H——, the gallant commander of the Cambria, was there; he is just returned from Greece, and told me many curious facts. What added to the interest was, that there lay on the sofa his dog Caroline, which had been present at the Battle of Navarino. He brought over with him a little boy who had been saved out of the Capitan Pacha’s ship when he burnt it.
I heard a great deal of Mavrocordato, my old travelling acquaintance in Italy.
August 21.—We were engaged to go, last evening, to
Maritimo, to Lord Cloncurry’s, but
Morgan had to dine previously at the
Mechanics’. I requested permission to bring Prince Pucklau Muskau with us, which was granted. Whilst I was
dressing, I dispatched Thomas and the carriage for his master to the
Mechanics’, with directions to proceed thence to fetch the Prince. Poor
Thomas was kept an age waiting
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“Sir Charless! Me lady will be very unhapy and sariously blame me, for ye not forthcoming.
“Ye most obedient and very humble servant,
“Thos. Grant.”
When they went for the Prince, after waiting an hour, word came out that His Highness had disappeared—where, nobody knew; and it was near twelve o’clock before we arrived at Maritimo. I made the Prince my excuse, and as there were a number of Englishmen by, there was a general laugh; and they said, “What! is poor Prince Pickle come here? Oh, he will have you down in his ‘morgen blatt’—he will pounce on you.” In short, I saw there was a ridicule about him, or a something, but it shall not deter me from being civil to him. He is a stranger and a foreigner, and recommended to me by Mrs. Beauclerk—sufficient causes. He comes to visit “remote Ireland,” and if I shut my door, what house will receive him? He has the eye of a cat—a sort of mild roguish look, like his master of Austria.
There is nothing so extraordinary as that the nobility
of England should have produced so few geniuses. Who but Lord Byron? I know not one. Lord Peterborough, perhaps, comes nearest; but he
was too wild and extravagant. The Dukes of Buckingham and Rochester
were wits, not geniuses; and their talent, developed by the civil wars, gave
them the advantage of middle life, necessary for exertion. The sharp-
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August 22.—What a splendid head of Arthur O’Connor, painted by Hamilton, I have just been looking at! This noble and unfinished picture represents him at full length, with very scanty drapery, and as Demosthenes. He looks like a noble Irish savage of the sixteenth century, with his blanket, mantle, and skewer. There were four of those O’Connors, all fine men as to the physique. They were Arthur, and Roger, and Roderick, and—I forget the other name. The two elder full of talent, and champions of Irish independence. They never crouched to power. Lord Longueville, their uncle, put Arthur into the Irish parliament to uphold the Government of the day, and to speak against the Catholics. He took the direct contrary line, and he was disowned and disinherited by Lord Longueville. When the Press, an Irish newspaper of 1797, was burnt by the common hangman, and Peter Finerty, the printer, was pilloried for seditious libel, published in that paper, Arthur O’Connor stood beside him upon the scaffold, and held an umbrella over his head.
I have so little confidence in the certainty of this
life, that I always live as if I were going to die. I never
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I never am in debt one shilling. Poor people ought always to pay ready money, by which means they live as if they were rich. By not doing so, the rich often live as if they were poor and die insolvent.
August 23.—I received a letter, signed James Devlin, which has made me laugh; a blessing, any how! He says he is come up from the country to settle in Dublin; “but being unable to get into any but a beggarly employ,” he has, “as his only alternative, and with a boldness, under such circumstances, he hopes pardonable,” written a poem; and “snatching fortitude from despair,” he sends it to me to get published. I read the poem—Recollections of a Patriot—not worth recollecting, and I have written at once to tell him so.
August 25.—Here is a letter from my poet showing a degree of sense that is wonderful in a poet who is also an Irishman. Here it is. What a contrast between the humble confidence that he can make good boots and shoes for gentlemen and the “fortitude from despair” with which he wrote his bad poetry! Oh! why will not every one find out his “last” and stick to it. How much more pleasantly the world would jog on!
Finding that I may expect no benefit from my poetry, and feeling that I must use some exertion to get myself out of the difficulties my want of employ has involved me in, I again take the liberty of troubling your Ladyship, requesting, should Sir C. Morgan want any articles in the way of my business (a gentleman’s boot and shoe-maker) that he would do me the kindness of favouring me with a trial, confident, should he do so, of my ability to give satisfaction.
Thursday, November 19.—To-day, is the Public Dinner given by the friends of civil and religious liberty, and got up at our house on Wednesday.
November 20.—I must get an account of the Dinner.
It went off splendidly, but there was some démélé about Prince Pucklau Muskau: first, he was not wanted there; and
next, he desired Morgan to find out, if
he went, whether the health of the king his master would be drunk (at a dinner
given to celebrate freedom!); and next, if he would have the precedence of an
Altezza granted to himself. There was a burst of “noes” when Morgan read the proposition.
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