my refusal of the money; this was a great point gained, and more easily (considering their commercial views of matters) than I expected. Dined at Lansdowne House. Went early for the purpose of consulting Lord L. with respect to my refusal of the money, or rather to tell him what I meant to do; for, having made up my mind, it would have been mockery to affect to ask advice. Told him, therefore, at starting, that though I should be most delighted to have the sanction of his opinion, yet that nothing could change my own views of the matter. Had but little time, however, for my statement to him and Lady Lansdowne before the company arrived. The party were the Hollands, the Gwydirs, the William Russells, the Cowpers, the Duke of Argyle, and Sydney Smith. Saw in my short conversation with them, that both Lord and Lady L. were strongly for my taking the money. Went off at ten o'clock to Paddington; a rather strange scene. Forgot to mention that one of the days I called upon D. Kinnaird, he read me a letter he had just received from a girl, entreating of him (in consideration of her family, who would be all made unhappy by the disclosure), to procure for her her letters, and a miniature of her, which had been in the possession of Lord Byron. Told Kinnaird I could guess the name of the lady, and did so. Forgot to mention that Hobhouse told me W. Horton had said, that if there was any power in law to make me take the money, he would enforce it.""

The anecdotes and repartees abounding in these volumes are very amusing, and contribute, not a little, to render entries, otherwise slip-sloppish, agreeable, and piquant. Whilst Moore was engaged in gathering facts for the Life of Sheridan, very many amusing traits of the eloquent and witty Irishman were related, and the poet never failed to enrol them in the Diary. As the stories were generally told at the dinner or supper table, the laughter and fun became contagious, and the humor of the dead wit seemed often to preside over the conversation devoted to his memory. The following are the best specimens of the Sheridaniana :

"By the by, the Duke mentioned at breakfast a good story Sheridan used to tell of one of his constituents (I believe) saying to him. 'Oh, sir, things cannot go on in this way; there must be a reform; we poor electors are not paid at all.' Henry told me yesterday evening (having joined us in our walk) that Shaw, having lent Sheridan near £500, used to dun him very considerably for it; and one day, when he had been rating about the debt, and insisting that he must be paid, the latter, having played off some of his plausible wheedling upon him, ended by saying that he was very much in want of £25 to pay the expenses of a journey he was about to take, and he knew Shaw would be good-natured enough to lend it to him. "Pon my word,' says Shaw, this is too bad, after keeping me out of my money in so shameful a manner, you now have the face to ask me for more; but it won't do, I must be paid my money; and

it is most disgraceful,' &c. &c. My dear fellow,' says Sheridan, 'the sum you ask me for is a very considerable one; whereas I only ask you for five-and-twenty pounds." Charles Sheridan told me that his father, being a good deal plagued by an old maiden relation of his always going out to walk with him, said one day that the weather was bad and rainy, to which the old lady answered, that, on the contrary, it had cleared up.' 'Yes,' said Sheridan, 'it has cleared up enough for one, but not for two.' He mentioned, too, that Tom Stepney supposed algebra to be a learned language, and referred to his father to know whether it was not so, who said, 'Certainly, Latin, Greek, and Algebra.' By what people was it spoken?' By the Algebrians, to be sure,' said Sheridan. A good deal of talk about Sheridan, said that Mrs. S. had sung once after her marriage at the installation of Lord North at Oxford, and as there were degrees then conferring honoris causâ, Lord N. said to Sheridan that he ought to have one exoris causâ. He (Lyne) mentioned Old Rose having once asked Sheridan what he thought of the name he had just given his little son, George Pitt Rose, and Sheridan replying, Why, I think a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.' To breakfast at Bowood. Talked with Lord Holland and Rogers afterwards about Sheridan. Question as to the things I might tell. Rogers mentioned that S.'s father said, 'Talk of the merit of Dick's Comedy! there's nothing in it; he had but to dip the pencil in his own heart, and he'd there find the characters of both Joseph and Charles.' Lord H. thought I might introduce this as an exemplification of the harsh feeling the father had towards him, which was such that he even permitted himself to say,' &c. &c. Sheridan latterly, though having his house in Saville Row, lived at an hotel, and used to chuckle at the idea of the bailiffs watching fruitlessly for him in Saville Row."

These, however, are not the only pleasant Ana in the volumes before us; and in reading we have noted the following, which we give at random, unmindful of time or volume :

"In talking at dinner of the disadvantage of people being brought up to wealth and rank, Lady H. said, that if she were a fairy, wishing to inflict the greatest mischief upon a child, she would make him abundantly rich, very handsome, with high rank, and have all these advantages to encircle him from the cradle; this she pronounced to be an infallible recipe for producing perfect misery; and "in the mean time,' she added, I should have the gratitude of the child's relations for the precious gifts I had endowed him with.' This produced discussion and dissent. Lord H. said it depended upon the natural disposition of the person. There were some that would be happy in all situations: There's Moore,' he said, 'you couldn't make him miserable even by inflicting a dukedom on him.' Mentioned that on some one saying to Peel, about Lawrence's picture of Croker, You can see the very quiver of his lips;' Yes,' said Peel, and the arrow coming out of it.' Croker himself was telling this to one of his countrymen, who answered, He meant Arrah, coming out of it.' . . 24th. Went to Power's: signed a

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renewed deed between us, the other having expired this last year. Went to Bishop's, to look over the things that have been done for the Greek work. After our singing together his glee, To Greece we give our shining blades,' he turned exultingly to Power, and said, That's worth one thousand pounds.' Presently we tried over my glee, Here, while the moonlight dim,' and he said, "That's worth five hundred.' Received a letter from Rogers, which begins thus: What a lucky fellow you are! Surely you must have been born with a rose in your lips, and a nightingale singing at the top of your bed. Some one praised a waterfall on Lord Plunket's property, and exclaimed, Why, it's quite a cataract.' 'Oh, that's all my eye,' said Plunket. A flourishing speech of Sheil about me in the Irish papers. Says I am the first poet of the day, and join the bird of paradise's plumes to the strength of the eagle's wing." It was mentioned that Luttrell said lately, with respect to the disaffection imputed to the army in England, Gad, sir, when the extinguisher takes fire, it's an awkward business.' Mulock talked of persons going to the well-spring of English poesy, in order to communicate what they have quaffed to others.' Saw this morning, at the bottom of a pill box, sent me from the apothecary's, these words, May Hebe's choicest gifts be thy lot, thou pride of Erin's Isle.' Gell full of jokes ; his best hit was upon Cornwall's using the word blasted.' 'That's not language for good society, sir; it is too much the Eolic.' Tierney said of Mackintosh'a very good historical man, and may be relied upon for a sound opinion about Cardinal Wolsey or so; but for anything of the present day—.' The Queen has said that she never committed adultery but once, and that was with Mrs. Fitzherbert's husband. Jekyll mentioned a man who told him his eating cost him almost nothing, for on Sunday,' said he, I always dine with my old friend,-and then eat so much that it lasts until Wednesday, when I buy some tripe, which I hate like the very devil, and which, accordingly, makes me so sick that I cannot eat any more until Sunday again.' Curran, upon a case where the Theatre Royal in Dublin brought an action against Astley for acting the Lock and Key, said: 'My Lords, the whole question turns upon this, whether the said Lock and Key is to be considered a patent one, or of the spring and tumbler kind.' Called on Crampton, and found him laid on the sofa. His story of the boy wishing for a place under government; his powers of screeching freestone.' Sure, it's me you hear in Dublin every Wednesday and Friday.' Lord Farnham saying, during the Queen's trial, that he would not make up his mind until he had heard one Italian witness, who had often been mentioned, and who might be expected to throw much light on the matter-one Polacca. A man asked another to come and dine off of boiled beef and potatoes with him, That I will,' said the other, and it's rather odd it should be exactly the same dinner I had at home for myself, barring the beef. Some one using the old expression about some light wine he was giving, There's not a headache in a hogshead of it,' was answered,No, but there is a bellyache in every glass of it.' A man having been asked to dinner repeatedly by a person whom he knew to be but a shabby Amphitryon, went at last, and found the

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:

dinner so meagre and bad, that he did not get a bit to eat. When the dishes were removing, the host said, 'Well, now the ice is broken, I suppose you will ask me to dine some day.' Most willingly.' Name your day, then.' • Ajour'd hui, par exemple,' answered the dinnerless guest. Lord Holland told of a man remarkable for absence, who, dining once at the same sort of shabby repast, fancied himself in his own house, and began to apologise for the wretchedness of the dinner. Luttrell told of a good phrase of an attorney's, in speaking of a reconciliation that had taken place between two persons whom he wished to set by the ears, I am sorry to tell you, sir, that a compromise has broken out between the parties.' Lord Rancliffe told a good thing of Sir E. Nagle's coming to our present King, when the news of Bonaparte's death had just arrived, and saying, I have the pleasure to tell your Majesty that your bitterest enemy is dead.' 'No! is she, by Gad?' said the King. All dined at Corry's; Counsellor Casey the only person beside ourselves was in the Irish Parliament: his account of the fracas between Grattan and Isaac Corry, which ended in a duel. Grattan's words were, 'To this charge (imputation of treason), what is to be said? My only answer to it here is that it is false; anywhere else-a blow, a blow!' at the same time extending his arm violently towards where Corry sat. In another part of his speech he began his defence thus-There were but two camps in the country, the minister and the insurgent,' &c. &c. Corry (our host) gave an account of Grattan's conduct on the day when he was wounded by the mob during his chairing. While under the hands of the surgeon he said, The papers will, of course, give an account of it; they will say he was unanimously elected; he was seated in the chair amidst acclamations, &c. &c., and on his return home was obliged to send for a surgeon to cure him of a black eye he had got on the way.' He said also to some one who came in, You see me here like Actæon, devoured by my own hounds.' Told a story of Grattan's taking some fine formal English visitors about his grounds, and falling himself into a ditch by taking them a wrong way. Casey men. tioned his extreme courtesy to Corry after he had wounded him. Corry wished him to go back to the house. No, no,' said G., ‘let the curs fight it out. I'll be with you, not only now, but till you are able to attend.' Grattan always annexed great importance to personal courage (readiness to go out). Isaac Corry, in speaking of him to Casey, expressed himself in the most enthusiastic manner; and when Casey told him he kept a minute of that memorable debate, seemed to regret it exceedingly, as ashamed of his own intemperance on the occasion: on finding afterwards that the writing of this minute was effaced by lying in a damp place, rejoiced proportionably. Had a letter from the Longmans, to say that the hope they had of finding out from the deputy that the money had never been paid into his hands, had been disappointed, and they must now proceed to negotiate as soon as possible. Kenny called in, and speaking of such a calamity coming upon one, so perfectly innocent of all delinquency in it as I am, said 'It is well you are a poet; a philosopher never could have borne it. There is a great deal of

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truth as well as humour in this. Kenny wrote his Raising the Wind in seven days. It is said that the Duchess de Berri wrote to her father (as a slap over the knuckles for his late sanction of the Revolution) Je suis accoucheé d'un fils et pas d'une constitution. A M. le Garde asked me, if I could speak French, and on my replying a little,' he said, Ah! oui: on ne pourrait pas avoir ecrit de si beaux vers sans savoir le Français. On the death of the Danish Ambassador in Paris, some commissare of police having come to the house for the purpose of making a procés verbal of his death, it was resisted by the suite as an infringement of the Ambassador's privilege, to which the answer of the police was, that Un ambassadeur dès qu'il est mort, rentre dans la vie privée. A country poet apostrophised the river Barrow thus- Wheel, Barrow, wheel thy winding course.' The Duke of Bedford's favorite songs were The Boys of Kilkenny' and Here's the Bower.' Forgot to mention that Casey, during my journey, mentioned to me a parody of his on those two lines in the Veiled Prophet'—

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'He knew no more of fear than one, who dwells

Beneath the tropics, knows of icicles.'

The following is his parody, which I bless my stars that none of my critics were lively enough to hit upon, for it would have stuck by

me:

He knew no more of fear than one, who dwells
On Scotia's mountains, knows of knee-buckles.'

On my mentioning this to Corry, he told me of a remark made upon the Angels,' by Kyle, the Provost, which I should have been equally sorry any of my critics had got hold of:-'I could not help figuring to myself,' says Kyle, all the while I was reading it, Tom, Jerry, and Logic on a lark from the sky. Few such lively shots from our University. In the large picture of Domenichino here the head of his Sibyl is repeated; as, indeed, it is often in his pictures. Chantrey does not admire the Duomo of Milan; thinks it too flat, and without any of the grandeur or richness of our Gothic at home. As we came along yesterday, I asked C. and J. which of the painters they would wish to be if they had their choice among all. C. said Tintoret; and J., Raphael: the former on account of the prodi. gious works of Tintoret at Venice, which I regret I did not see more perfectly. Letters from Bess, in which, alluding to what I had communicated to her of Lord Lansdowne's friendship, and the probability of my being soon liberated from exile, she says, 'God bless you, my own free, fortunate, happy bird (what she generally calls me); but remember that your cage is in Paris, and that your mate longs for you.' Called on Chantrey, who seemed heartily glad to see me; his atelier full of mind; never saw such a set of thinking heads as his busts. Walter Scott's very remarkable from the height of the head. The eyes, Chantrey says, as usually taken as a centre, and the lower portion (or half) always much the greater; but in Scott's head the upper part is even longer than the lower. 30th. Dined at Lord Bristol's to meet Madame de Genlis: a large party,