bitations of our Bonnet Lairds about the beginning of the last century. The area of the house is about two Scotch acres, including the garden. The clipped and shady walks have been long since cut down, which takes away much interest from it; and the stupid Fleming to whom it belonged, cut down the young trees in front of it, because they had been wounded by the bullets, which he was informed "would cause them to bleed to death!" The nobleman who now possesses it, has, with better taste, repaired the chateau, and will not permit any alteration in its appearance. On our return in the evening, I pressed his Lordship to dinner, which he declined, saying" I have long abandoned the pleasures of the table." He, however, promised to take his coffee with my wife, provided there was no party. He came at nine o'clock, and greeted her most cordially, again expressing the pleasure he felt in meeting the friend of his mother. Notwithstanding the interdiction, I had invited two accomplished gentlemen to meet him; one of them, a Hanoverian in our service, had travelled in Greece, and being extremely intelligent, a most interesting conversation on that classical country, now struggling for its liberties, took place. The poet was in high spirits and good humour, and he charmed us with anecdotes and descriptions of the various countries in the Archipelago and Albania, which he had just visited. He neither ate nor drank, and the only refreshment he could be persuaded to take was an ice; but he remained with us till two hours past midnight. My wife exhibited her scrap-book, in which Sir W. Scott had, a few months before, written a few stanzas on the battle. She begged his Lordship to do her a similar honour, to which he readily consented, saying, "if she would trust him with her book, he would insert a verse in it before he slept." He marched off with it under his arm, and next morning returned with the two beautiful stanzas which, a year after, he published in his Third Canto of "Childe Harold," with a little variation. Stop, for thy tread is on an Empire's dust." I consider these as being highly valuable, being the prime pensieri of the splendid stanzas on Waterloo. I asked Byron what he thought of Mr. Scott's "Field of Waterloo," just published-if it was fair to ask one poet his opinion of a living contemporary. "Oh," said he, "quite fair; besides, there is not much subject for criticism in this hasty sketch. The reviewers call it a falling off; but I am sure there is no poet living who could have written so many good lines on so meagre a subject, in so short a time. Scott," he added, " is a fine poet, and a most amiable man. We are great friends. As a prose writer, he has no rival; and has not been approached since Cervantes, in depicting manners. His tales are my constant companions. It is highly absurd his denying, what every one that knows him believes, his being the author of these admirable works. Yet no man is obliged to give his name to the public, except he chooses so to do; and Scott is not likely to be compelled by the law, for he does not write libels, nor a line of which he may be ashamed." He said a great deal more in praise of his friend, for whom he had the highest respect and regard. "I wish," added the Aug.-VOL. XXVI. NO. CIV. poet with feeling, "it had been my good fortune to have had such a Mentor. No author," he observed, "had deserved more from the public, or has been so liberally rewarded. Poor Milton got only 15l. for his Paradise Lost,' while a modern poet has as much for a stanza." I know not if he made any allusion to himself in this remark, but it has been said that Murray paid him that sum for every verse of "Childe Harold." Lord Byron, in reading aloud the stanzas of Mr. Scott, "For high, and deathless is the name, Oh Hougomont, thy ruins claim! he exclaimed, striking the page with his hand, "I'll be d-d if they will, Mr. Scott, be forgot!" There is a curious circumstance relative to his own verses written in this scrap-book, which exhibits the poet's modesty and good humour. A few weeks after he had written them, the well-known artist, R. R. Reinagle, a friend of mine, arrived in Brussels, when I invited him to dine with me and showed him the lines, requesting him to embellish them with an appropriate vignette to the following passage : "Here his last flight the haughty eagle flew, He wears the shatter'd links of the world's broken chain." Mr. Reinagle sketched with a pencil a spirited chained eagle, grasping the earth with his talons. I had occasion to write to his Lordship, and mentioned having got this clever artist to draw a vignette to his beautiful lines, and the liberty he had taken by altering the action of the eagle. In reply to this, he wrote to me-" Reinagle is a better poet, and a better ornithologist than I am; eagles, and all birds of prey, attack with their talons, and not with their beaks, and I have altered the line thus— 'Then tore, with bloody talon, the rent plain.' This is, I think, a better line, besides its poetical justice." I need hardly add, when I communicated this flattering compliment to the painter, that he was highly gratified. I happened to have a copy of the "Novelle Amorose" of Casti, a severe satire on the monks, which Lord Byron had never seen, as its sale was prohibited in Italy. I presented him with it, and in his letter to me from Geneva he writes, "I cannot tell you what a treat your gift of Casti has been to me; I have almost got him by heart. I had read his Animali Parlanti,' but I think these Novelle' much better. I long to go to Venice to see the manners so admirably described." A year afterwards he published "Beppo," which is certainly an imitation of the " Novelle Amorose ;" and I think if he had not read them, it would never have been written. Lord Byron travelled in a huge coach, copied from the celebrated one of Napoleon, taken at Genappe, with additions. Besides a lit de repos, it contained a library, a plate-chest, and every apparatus for dining in it. I have forgotten by whom it was built, but he told me it had cost him six hundred guineas; it was most ingeniously contrived. It was not, however, found sufficiently capacious for his baggage and suite; and he purchased a caleche at Brussels for his servants. It broke down going to Waterloo, and I advised him to return it, as it seemed to be a crazy machine; but as he had made a deposit of forty Napoleons (certainly double its value), the honest Fleming would not consent to restore the cash, or take back his packing-case, except under a forfeiture of thirty Napoleons. As his Lordship was to set out the following day, he begged me to make the best arrangement I could in the affair. He had no sooner taken his departure, than the worthy sellier inserted a paragraph in "The Brussels Oracle," stating, "that the noble 'milor Anglais' had absconded with his caleche, value 1800 francs!" I need not add that my indignation was great on perusing this rascally libel; and I lost not a moment in applying to a lawyer, who summoned the gentleman before the mayor. He now began to draw in his horns, and on my threatening to prosecute him for defamation, he consented to take a hundred francs for the use of his carriage to Waterloo, and as much more for some alterations he pretended to have made, which, as I could not contradict, I was obliged to submit to, although my lawyer was desirous I should resist such gross imposition. I, however, agreed, on condition that a declaration should be inserted, at his expense, stating the true merits of the case. The following week the English "Courier" had the impudence to copy into its vindictive columns the libel, without noticing the explanation, the Editor adding some bitter remarks of his own, quite uncalled for. I mention this as an example of the party spirit in England at this period. Lord Byron was a Liberal, and therefore obnoxious to the ministerial" Oracle," the "Courier." I determined, however, in the absence of my friend, to do him justice to the public, and wrote to Mr. Perry a full statement of the case. He published my letter, verbatim, in the "Morning Chronicle," with his own comments, which, I have no doubt, vindicated Lord Byron entirely from the gross aspersions of the "Courier," though the Editor had not the honesty to make any amende. Lord Byron was beyond the Alps, and he thought himself safe from the vengeance which would otherwise have fallen on him. I transmitted the whole detail to Lord Byron, who was much pleased with my conduct in justifying him, and extricating him out of the hands of the Flemish Philistines. I was intimately acquainted with Lord Byron's mother from her childhood. She lost both her parents before she was ten years old, and lived occasionally with the family of General Abercromby, of Glassaugh, to whom she was nearly related. I passed some weeks in her company there, when she came from school, a romping, comely, goodhumoured girl of sixteen, inclined to corpulency. She was fond of running races, and swinging between two trees on the lawn; but from this last exercise she was at last interdicted, for one of the ropes gave way, and she had so severe a fall that she fainted, and I carried her in my arms into the house, but no injury occurred except that she was obliged to submit to the lancet, and a temporary confinement. One of her nearest relations, Mrs. D- the wife of the Admiral, was about this time residing at Bath; and this lady undertook the charge of the young heiress, and of introducing her into the world. She had been too long in Scotland, for she had acquired a confirmed Scotch accent. Now it was to be feared that some northern adventurer might entice her into a clandestine marriage, for she had no mother or good aunt to look after her. How Bath was chosen as an eligible residence for a young and giddy heiress, seems rather surprising; but thither she went, and was introduced. It was soon known that she had an estate worth sixty thousand pounds, and she consequently attracted many admirers: among others, Captain Byron, a guardsman, (or lately one,) paid his court to the northern constellation. A young man of address and insinuating manners, he got into the young lady's good graces, and persuaded her to take a trip to Gretna Green with him. This clandestine step placed her entirely at his mercy in respect to settlements, and entailed on her, in a few years, the misery of dependence. It was with some difficulty that the noble captain was prevailed on to settle two hundred a-year out of her two thousand. Crippled with debts, which he had previously contracted, his extravagance continued, and, after cutting down the timber, he disposed of the estate to the Earl of Aberdeen, much under its value, and within three years he had squandered every shilling. Fortunately death put a stop to his career, and the poor widow (just out of her teens) had no other provision left for herself and son, but the pitiful pittance which had, by the kind intercession of a friend, been saved to her. 66 She retired to obscurity, but in the midst of her friends, to Banff, to educate her child. It is a singular circumstance that, at the birth of this boy, there were five males between him and the title, yet, before he had reached his seventh year, he succeeded to it. On this subject his nurse was prophetic; for on his mother's asking this woman, who had been thirty years in the family, if he was a fine child? Ay, madam," said she, "he's a bonny bairn, and he has got a club-bed foot, and he'll surely be Lord Byron, for a' the Lord Byrons ha' a clubbed foot." This I have heard Mrs. Byron tell when her son was an infant; and it was certainly true that two of the family had been born with this defect. She removed to Aberdeen, when he was five years old, for the advantage of better masters than Banff afforded, where she continued until his succession to the title and estates of his relation enabled her, with the Lord Chancellor's permission, to carry her ward to England. He was sent to Harrow; and that she might be near the idol of her affections, she took a sinall house in London. I had frequent opportunities of seeing the youth when he came to town for the holidays. At fourteen he was a fine, lively, restless lad, full of fire and energy, and passionately fond of riding. His exploits in Hyde Park I have already mentioned :—when he boasted of beating me in the race, I said, "Do you know the proverb, that there is a great deal in riding a borrowed horse!" He did not know this adage, until I explained it to him; when he good-humouredly drew in his reins, acknowledging the rebuke, and adding, " If the pony was mine, I would bet you my month's pocket-money, that I would be at Kensington gardens before you."-" Well," I said, we will have a trial to 46 morrow for half-a-crown, but to-day we must not race, for our nags have had too much water." He blabbed this to his mother, who would on no account permit the course. But the ride was not to be aban doned, and he gave his parole that he would not gallop, and kept religiously to it; for, though he was a spoiled child, and had too much of his own way, he never did any thing intentionally to disoblige or vex her, at least so she has often told me. Our intimacy with Mrs. Byron Gordon continued after Lord Byron went abroad: she sensibly felt the separation, and her spirits were only kept up with the hopes of his speedy return. Alas! she did not live to have this happiness; for when she wrote to him that she had got into bad health, and was desirous to see him, he hastened to obey her wishes, but she died a week or two before his arrival, of a sore throat. This greatly distressed him, as he had taken it into his head, that, had he been with her, or had never quitted her, she might have been still living. Yet he acknowledged that she did not want the best medical advice. She was extremely corpulent, and he told me that he was also inclined to obesity, to prevent which, he was become very abstemious, and took violent exercise. The last time I saw his mother, she told me, that his affections were placed on a young lady, whose name she did not mention, but I have heard that it was Miss Mary Chaworth, daughter to the man whom Lord Byron's predecessor had killed in a tavern brawl. That he had loved another before his marriage with Miss Millbanke, is certain. His verses 66 to Mary," are supposed to allude to Miss Chaworth. Poor Byron had the misfortune to be connected with false friends, who, after receiving benefits at his hand, became his bitterest foes. Polidori, whom he selected as his " compagnon de voyage," was one of those. After living on the most amicable footing with his patron for more than a year, he took umbrage for some trifle; and because Byron took part in some dispute the doctor had with a Venetian nobleman, he quarrelled with his friend, and left him abruptly at Venice. I have since heard, from an authority I could not doubt, that this rupture was entirely produced by Polidori, who, though a talented man, was any thing but amiable. In proof of his bad dispositions and vindictive temper, he published, soon after his arrival in England, a miserable squib, called "The Vampire," which he had the impudence to try to palm on the public as the produce of Byron's pen; but the cheat was speedily detected, and the venomous Bat and its author were shortly forgotten. It would appear that Lord Byron had not much discrimination in the choice of his friends, with all his acuteness and knowledge of life. Sir Walter Scott. Sir Walter Scott visited Brussels about the middle of August 1816, when I had the good fortune to meet him at the house of Sir Frederick Adam, who was prevented by a wound from joining his brigade, though he was able to do the duties of the small garrison there. Mr. Scott accepted my services to conduct him to Waterloo. The general's aid-de-camp was also of the party, Mr. Scott being accompanied by two friends, his fellow travellers. He made no secret of his |