the political state of Europe at that period, and those "bricconi," as he styled them, the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance; and, before I left Rome, he kindly presented to me a set of engravings from some of his finest statues, to

In one of the poems contained in this volume,† allusion is made to an evening not easily forgotten, when Chantrey and myself were taken by Canova to the Borghese Palace, for the purpose of showing us, by the light of a taper-his favorite mode of exhibiting that work-his beautiful statue of the Princess Borghese, called the Venere Vincitrice. In Chantrey's eagerness to point out some grace or effect that peculiarly struck him, he snatched the light out of Canova's hand; and to this circumstance the following passage of the poem referred to was meant to allude:

When he, thy peer in art and fame,
Hung o'er the marble with delight;‡
And, while his ling'ring hand would steal
O'er every grace the taper's rays,
Gave thee, with all the gen'rous zeal
Such master-spirits only feel,

The best of fame-a rival's praise. One of the days that still linger most pleasantly in my memory, and which, I trust, neither Lady Calcott nor Mr. Eastlake have quite forgotten, was that of our visit together to the Palatine Mount, when, as we sauntered about that picturesque spot, enjoying the varied views of Rome which it commands, they made me, for the first time, acquainted with Guidi's spirited Ode on the Arcadians, in which there is poetry enough to make amends for all the nonsense of his rhyming brethren. Truly and grandly does he exclaim,

"Indomita e superba ancor è Roma
Benchè si veggià col gran busto a terra;

collection of Poems, which a Roman poet, named Missirini, had written in praise of his different "Marmi."

When Lord John Russell and myself parted, at Milan, it was agreed between us, that after a short visit to Rome, and (if practicable within the allowed time) to Naples, I was to rejoin him at Genoa, and from thence accompany him to England. But the early period for which Parliament was summoned, that year, owing to the violent proceedings at Manchester, rendered it necessary for Lord John to hasten his return to England. I was, therefore, most fortunate, under such circumstances, in being permitted by my friends Chantrey and Jackson to join in their journey homeward; through which lucky arrangement, the same precious privilege I had enjoyed, at Rome, of hearing the opinions of such practised judges, on all the great works of art I saw in their company, was continued afterwards to me through the various collections we visited together, at Florence, Bologna, Modena, Parma, Milan, and Turin.

To some of those pictures and statues that most took my fancy, during my tour, allusions will be found in a few of the poems contained in this volume. But the great pleasure I derived from these and many other such works arose far more from the poetical nature of their subjects than from any judgment I had learned to form of their real merit as works of art, -a line of lore in which, notwithstanding my course of schooling, I remained, I fear, unenlightened to the last. For all that was lost upon me, however, in the halls of Art, I was more than consoled in the cheap picturegallery of Nature; and a glorious sunset I witnessed in ascending the Simplon is still remembered by me with a depth and freshness of feeling which no one work of art I saw in the galleries of Italy has left behind.

I have now a few words to devote to a somewhat kindred subject, with which a poem or

A slight alteration here has rendered these verses more true to the actual fact than they were in the original form.

two contained in the following pages are closely connected.* In my Preface to the first Volume of this collection, I briefly noticed the taste for Private Theatrical Performances which prevailed during the latter half of the last century among the higher ranks in Ireland. This taste continued for nearly twenty years to survive the epoch of the Union, and in the performances of the Private Theatre of Kilkenny gave forth its last, as well as, perhaps, brightest flashes. The life and soul of this institution was our manager, the late Mr. Richard Power, a gentleman who could boast a larger circle of attached friends, and through a life more free from shadow or alloy, than any individual it has ever been my lot to know. No livelier proof, indeed, could be required of the sort of feeling entertained towards him than was once shown in the reception given to the two following homely lines which occurred in a Prologue I wrote to be spoken by Mr. Corry in the character of Vapid.

'Tis said our worthy manager intends

To help my night, and he, you know, has friends.† These few simple words I wrote with the assured conviction that they would produce more effect, from the homefelt truism they contained, than could be effected by the most labored burst of eloquence; and the result was just what I had anticipated, for the house rung, for a considerable time, with the heartiest plaudits. The chief comic, or rather farcical, force of the company lay in my friend Mr. Corry, and "longo intervallo," myself; and though, as usual with low comedians, we were much looked down upon by the lofty lords of the buskin, many was the sly joke we used to indulge together at the expense of our heroic brethren. Some waggish critic, indeed, is said to have declared that of all the personages of our theatre he most admired the prompter,"because he was least seen and best heard." But this joke was, of course, a mere goodhumored slander. There were two, at least, of our dramatic corps, Sir Wrixon Becher and Mr. Rothe, whose powers, as tragic actors, few amateurs have ever equalled; and Mr. Corry -perhaps alone of all our company-would have been sure of winning laurels on the public stage.

* See page 512.

66

As to my own share in these representations, the following list of my most successful characters will show how remote from the line of the Heroic was the small orbit through which I ranged; my chief parts having been Sam, in Raising the Wind," Robin Roughhead, Mungo, Sadi, in the " Mountaineers," Spado, and Peeping Tom. In the part of Spado there occur several allusions to that gay rogue's shortness of stature, which never failed to be welcomed by my auditors with laughter and cheers; and the words "Even Sanguino allows I am a clever little fellow" was always a signal for this sort of friendly explosion. One of the songs, indeed, written by O'Keefe for the character of Spado, so much abounds with points thus personally applicable, that many supposed, with no great compliment either to my poetry or my modesty, that the song had been written, expressly for the occasion, by myself. The following is the verse to which I allude, and for the poetry of which I was thus made responsible:

"Though born to be little's my fate,

Yet so was the great Alexander;
And, when I walk under a gate,
I've no need to stoop like a gander.
I'm no lanky, long hoddy-doddy,
Whose paper-kite sails in the sky;
Though wanting two feet, in my body,
In soul, I am thirty feet high."

Some further account of the Kilkenny Theatre, as well as of the history of Private Theatricals in general, will be found in an article I wrote on the subject for the Edinburgh Review, vol. xlvi. No. 92, p. 368.

PREFACE

ΤΟ

THE EIGHTH VOLUME.

ON my return from the interesting visit to Rome, of which some account has been given in the preceding Preface, I took up my abode in Paris, and, being joined there by my family, continued to reside in that capital, or its en

† See page 512.

virons, till about the close of the year 1822. As no life, however sunny, is without its clouds, I could not escape, of course, my share of such passing shadows; and this long estrangement from our happy English home, towards which my family yearned even more fondly than myself, had been caused by difficulties of a pecuniary nature, and to a large amount, in which I had been involved by the conduct of the person who acted as my deputy in the small office I held at Bermuda.

That I should ever have come to be chosen for such an employment, seems one of those freaks or anomalies of human destiny which baffle all ordinary speculation; and went far,. indeed, to realize Beaumarchais' notion of the sort of standard by which, too frequently, qualification for place is regulated,—" Il fallut un calculateur; ce fut un danseur qui l'obtint." But however much, in this instance, I suffered from my want of schooling in matters of business, and more especially from my having neglected the ordinary precaution of requiring security from my deputy, I was more than consoled for all such embarrassment, were it even ten times as much, by the eager kindness with which friends pressed forward to help to release me from my difficulties. Could I venture to name the persons, and they were many, who thus volunteered their aid, it would be found they were all of them men whose characters enhanced such a service, and that, in all, the name and the act reflected honor upon each other.

I shall so far lift the veil in which such delicate generosity seeks to shroud itself, as to mention briefly the manner in which one of these kind friends, himself possessing but limited means, proposed to contribute to the object of releasing me from my embarrassments. After adverting, in his letter, to my misfortunes, and "the noble way," as he was pleased to say, "in which I bore then.," he adds,-" would it be very impertinent to say, that I have 500l. entirely at your disposal, to be paid when you like; and as much more that I could advance, upon any reasonable security, payable in seven years?" The writer concludes by apologizing anxiously and delicately for "the liberty which he thus takes," assuring me that " he would not have made the offer if he did not feel that he would most readily accept the same assistance

from me." I select this one instance from among the many which that trying event of my life enables me to adduce, both on account of the deliberate feeling of manly regard which it manifests, and also from other considerations which it would be out of place here to mention, but which rendered so genuine a mark of friendship from such a quarter peculiarly touching and welcome to me.

When such were the men who hastened to my aid in this emergency, I need hardly say, it was from no squeamish pride, for the pride would have been in receiving favors from such hands,—that I came to the resolution of gratefully declining their offers, and endeavoring to work out my deliverance by my own efforts. With a credit still fresh in the market of liter| ature, and with publishers ready as ever to risk their thousands on my me, I could not but feel that, however gratifying was the generous zeal of such friends, I should best show that I, in some degree, deserved their offers, by declining, under such circumstances, to accept them.

Meanwhile, an attachment had issued against me from the Court of Admiralty; and as a negotiation was about to be opened with the American claimants, for a reduction of their large demand upon me,-supposed, at that time, to amount to six thousand pounds,--it was deemed necessary that, pending the treaty, I should take up my abode in France.

To write for the means of daily subsistence, and even in most instances to "forestall the slow harvest of the brain," was for me, unluckily, no novel task. But I had now, in addition to these home calls upon the Muse, a new, painful, and, in its first aspect, overwhelming exigence to provide for; and, certainly, Paris, swarming throughout as it was, at that period, with rich, gay, and dissipated English, was, to a person of my social habits and multifarious acquaintance, the very worst possible place that could have been resorted to for even the semblance of a quiet or studious home. The only tranquil, and, therefore, to me, most precious portions of that period were the two summers passed by my family and myself with our kind Spanish friends, the V

ls,

at their beautiful place, La Butte Coaslin, on the road up to Bellevue. There, in a cottage belonging to M. V 1, and but a

few steps from his house, we contrived to conjure up an apparition of Sloperton ;* and I was able for some time to work with a feeling of comfort and home. I used frequently to pass the morning in rambling alone through the noble park of St. Cloud, with no apparatus for the work of authorship but my memorandum-book and pencils, forming sentences to run smooth and moulding verses into shape. In the evenings I generally joined with Madame V * 1 in Italian duetts, or, with far mo.e pleasure, sat as listener, while she sung to the Spanish guitar those sweet songs of her own country to which few voices could do such justice.

One of the pleasant circumstances connected with our summer visits to La Butte was the near neighborhood of our friend Mr. Kenny, the lively dramatic writer, who was lodged picturesquely in the remains of the Palace of the King's Aunts, at Bellevue. I remember, on my first telling Kenny the particulars of my Bermuda mishap, his saying, after a pause of real feeling," Well,-it's lucky you're a poet; philosopher never could have borne it." Washington Irving also was, for a short time, our visiter; and still recollects, I trust, his reading to me some parts of his then forthcoming work, Bracebridge Hall, as we sat together on the grass walk that leads to the Rocher, at La Butte.

-a

Among the writings, then but in embryo, to which I looked forward for the means of my enfranchisement, one of the most important, as well as most likely to be productive, was my intended Life of Sheridan. But I soon found that, at such a distance from all those living authorities from whom alone I could gain any interesting information respecting the private life of one who left behind him so little epistolary correspondence, it would be wholly impossible to proceed satisfactorily with this task. Accordingly I wrote to Mr. Murray and Mr. Wilkie, who were at that time the intended publishers of the work, to apprize them of this temporary obstacle to its progress.

Being thus baffled in the very first of the few resources I had looked to, I next thought of a Romance in verse, in the form of Letters, or Epistles; and with this view sketched out a

"A little cot, with trees arow,
And, like its master, very low."

Oh hint to the bard, 'tis retirement alone
Can hallow its harp or ennoble its tone:
Like you, with a veil of seclusion between,
His song to the world let him utter unseen,
&c. &c.t

It was, indeed, to the secluded life I led during the years 1813-1816, in a lone cottage among the fields in Derbyshire, that I owed the inspiration, whatever may have been its value, of some of the best and most popular portions of Lalla Rookh. It was amidst the snows of two or three Derbyshire winters that I found myself enabled, by that concentration of thought which retirement alone gives, to call up around me some of the sunniest of those Eastern scenes which have since been welcomed in India itself, as almost native to its clime.

But, abortive as had now been all my efforts to woo the shy spirit of Poesy, amidst such unquiet scenes, the course of reading I found time to pursue, on the subject of Egypt, was of no small service in storing my mind with the various knowledge respecting that country, which some years later I turned to account, in writing the story of the Epicurean. The kind facilities, indeed, towards this object, which some of the most distinguished French scholars and artists afforded me, are still remembered by me with thankfulness. Besides my old acquaintance, Denon, whose drawings of Egypt, then of some value, I frequently consulted, I found Mons. Fourier and Mons. Langlès no less prompt in placing books at my disposal. With Humboldt, also, who was at that time in Paris, I had more than once some conversation on the subject of Egypt, and remember his expressing himself in no very laudatory terms respecting the labors of the French savans in that country. I had now been foiled and frustrated in two

† See p. 127 of this edition.

POPE.