the terror of the neighbourhood: will you try your powers on him?" Pitt agreed to do so; and the company descended into the court-yard. A servant held the mastiff by a chain. Pitt knelt down at a short distance from the animal, and stared him sternly in the face. They all shuddered. At a signal given, the mastiff was let loose, and rushed furiously towards Pitt, then suddenly checked his pace, seemed confounded, and, leaping over Pitt's head, ran away, and was not seen for many hours after.

During one of my visits to Italy, while I was walking, a little before my carriage, on the road, not far from Vicenza, I perceived two huge dogs, nearly as tall as myself, bounding towards me (from out a gate-way, though there was no house in sight). I recollected what Pitt had done; and trembling from head to foot, I yet had resolution enough to stand quite still and eye them with a fixed look. They gradually relaxed their speed from a gallop to a trot, came up to me, stopped for a moment, and then went back again.

Dunning (afterwards Lord Ashburton) was "stating the law" to a jury at Guildhall, when Lord Mansfield interrupted him by saying, "If that be law, I'll go home and burn my books."-"My Lord," replied Dunning, "you had better go home and read them."

Dunning was remarkably ugly. One night, while he was playing whist, at Nando's, with Horne Tooke and two others, Lord Thurlow called at the door, and desired the waiter to give a note to Dunning (with whom, though their politics were so different, he was very intimate). The waiter did not know Dunning by sight. "Take the note up stairs," said Thurlow, "and deliver it to the ugliest man at the card-table-to him who most resembles the knave of spades." The note immediately reached its destination.-Horne Tooke used often to tell this anec

dote.

When I was young, we had (what we have not now) several country - gentlemen of considerable literary celebrity,—for instance, Hayley, Sargent (author of The Mine), and Webb. There are some

good remarks on painting and on poetry scattered through Webb's different pieces.

If Hayley was formerly over-rated, he is now undervalued. He was a most accomplished person, as indeed is evident from the notes to his various poems,―notes which Lord Holland admires greatly.* His translation of the First Canto of the Inferno † is on the whole good; but he has omitted some of the striking circumstances in the original.

When I first came forward as a poet, I was highly gratified by the praise which Hayley bestowed on my writings, and which was communicated to me by Cadell the publisher.

I once travelled with Lord Lansdowne (when Lord Henry Petty) to Bognor, in the neighbourhood of which Hayley was then living (not at Eartham, but in a village‡ near it). I went to visit him. The door was opened by a little girl; and

"Lord Holland, the best-informed and most elegant of our writers on the subject of the Spanish theatre, declared that he had been induced to learn that language by what Hayley had written concerning the poet Ercilla." Cary's Life of Hayley,— Lives of English Poets, &c. p. 347.-ED.

In the Notes to his Essay on Poetry.-ED.

Felpham.-ED.

when I said, "Is Mr. Hayley at home?" he himself exclaimed, "Yes, he is"-(he recognised my voice, though we had only met once before,-at Flaxman's); and out he came, adding, "I am delighted to see you: if I had not known your voice, I should not have let you in, for I am very busy." I took coffee with him, and he talked most agreeably. I said that Lord Henry Petty was my travelling companion, and that he was very anxious to be introduced to him: but Hayley, who did not care a straw for rank, could not be prevailed upon to see his lordship.

In those days, indeed, praise was sweet to me, even when it came from those who were far inferior to Hayley: what pleasure I felt on being told that Este had said of me, "A child of Goldsmith, sir!"

Parson Este, in conjunction with Captain Topham, edited the newspaper called The World. He was reader at Whitehall; and he read the service so admirably, that Mrs. Siddons used frequently to go to hear him. My sister and I once took him with us on a little tour; and when we were at Ross, he

read to us Pope's lines about "the man of Ross,"I cannot describe how beautifully.

Este published a strange book, My own Life, and A Journey through Flanders, &c. He used to throw himself into attitudes in the street. At last he went mad, and died insane.

I wish somebody would collect all the Epigrams written by Dr. Mansel (Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Bishop of Bristol): they are remarkably neat and clever.

When titled ladies become authoresses or composers, their friends suffer for it. Lady

asked

me to buy her book; and I replied that I would do so when I was rich enough. I went to a concert at Lady -'s, during which several pieces composed by her daughter were performed; and early next morning, a music-seller arrived at my house, bringing with him the daughter's compositions (and a bill receipted), price sixteen shillings.