Note 10 — HORACE AND JAMES SMITH
Reading edition
This would seem to show that poet and prophet are synonymous, the noble bard having afterwards returned to England, and again quitted it, under domestic circumstances painfully notorious. His good-humoured forgiveness of the Authors has been already alluded to in the Preface. Nothing of this illustrious poet, however trivial, can be otherwise than interesting. 'We knew him well.' At Mr. Murray's dinner-table the annotator met him and Sir John Malcolm. Lord Byron talked of intending to travel in Persia. 'What must I do when I set off?' said he to Sir John. 'Cut off your buttons!' 'My buttons! what, these metal ones?' 'Yes; the Persians are in the main very honest fellows; but if you go thus bedizened, you will infallibly be murdered for your buttons.' At a dinner at Monk Lewis's chambers in the Albany, Lord Byron expressed to the writer his determination not to go there again, adding, 'I never will dine with a middle-aged man who fills up his table with young ensigns, and has looking-glass panels to his book-cases.' Lord Byron, when one of the Drury Lane Committee of Management, challenged the writer to sing alternately (like the swains in Virgil) the praises of Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, who, by the by, was hissed off the stage for an imputed intimacy, of which she was quite innocent.
The contest ran as follows:
'Wake, muse of fire, your ardent lyre, Pour forth your amorous ditty, But first profound, in duty bound, Applaud the new committee; Their scenic art from Thespis cart All jaded nags discarding, To London drove this queen of love, Enchanting Mrs. Mardyn. 'Though tides of love around her rove, I fear she'll choose Pactolus— In that bright surge bards ne'er immerge, So I must e'en swim solus. "Out, out, alas!" ill-fated gas, That shin'st round Covent Garden, Thy ray how flat, compared with that From eye of Mrs. Mardyn!'
And so on. The reader has, no doubt, already discovered 'which is the justice, and which is the thief.'
Lord Byron at that time wore a very narrow cravat of white sarsnet, with the shirt-collar falling over it; a black coat and waistcoat, and very broad white trousers, to hide his lame foot—these were of Russia duck in the morning, and jean in the evening. His watch-chain had a number of small gold seals appended to it, and was looped up to a button of his waistcoat. His face was void of colour; he wore no whiskers. His eyes were grey, fringed with long black lashes; and his air was imposing, but rather supercilious. He undervalued David Hume; denying his claim to genius on account of his bulk, and calling him, from the heroic epistle,
'The fattest hog in Epicurus' sty.'
One of this extraordinary man's allegations was, that 'fat is an oily dropsy.' To stave off its visitation, he frequently chewed tobacco in lieu of dinner, alleging that it absorbed the gastric juice of the stomach, and prevented hunger. 'Pass your hand down my side,' said his lordship to the writer; 'can you count my ribs?' 'Every one of them.' 'I am delighted to hear you say so. I called last week on Lady ——; "Ah, Lord Byron," said she, "how fat you grow!" But you know Lady —— is fond of saying spiteful things!' Let this gossip be summed up with the words of Lord Chesterfield, in his character of Bolingbroke: 'Upon the whole, on a survey of this extraordinary character, what can we say but "Alas, poor human nature!"'
His favourite Pope's description of man is applicable to Byron individually:
'Chaos of thought and passion all confused, Still by himself abused or disabused; Created part to rise and part to fall, Great lord of all things, yet a slave to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled— The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.'
The writer never heard him allude to his deformed foot except upon one occasion, when, entering the green-room of Drury Lane, he found Lord Byron alone, the younger Byrne and Miss Smith the dancer having just left him, after an angry conference about a pas seul. 'Had you been here a minute sooner,' said Lord B., 'you would have heard a question about dancing referred to me;—me! (looking mournfully downward) whom fate from my birth has prohibited from taking a single step.'