Lord Holland never ventured to ask any one to dinner (not even me, whom he had known so long and so intimately) without previously consulting Lady H. Shortly before his death, I called at Holland House, and found only Lady H. within. As I was coming out, I met Lord Holland, who said, "Well, do you return to dinner?" I answered, “No; I have not been invited."—Perhaps this deference to Lady H.* was not to be regretted; for Lord Holland was so hospitable and good-natured, that, had he been left to himself, he would have had a crowd at his table daily. What a disgusting thing is the fagging at our great schools! When Lord Holland was a schoolboy, he was forced, as a fag, to toast bread with his fingers for the breakfast of another boy. Lord H.'s mother sent him a toasting-fork. His fagger broke it over his head, and still compelled him to prepare the toast in the old way. In consequence of this • Lady Holland was not among Mr. Rogers's earliest acquaintances in the great world.-Mr. Richard Sharp once said to him, "When do you mean to give up the society of Lady Jersey?" Mr. Rogers replied, "When you give up that of Lady Holland,"―little thinking then that she was eventually to be one of his own most intimate friends.-ED. process his fingers suffered so much that they always retained a withered appearance. Lord Holland persisted in saying that pictures gave him more pain than pleasure. He also hated music; yet, in some respects, he had a very good ear, for he was a capital mimic. What a pity it is that Luttrell gives up nearly his whole time to persons of mere fashion! Every thing that he has written is very clever. Are you acquainted with his epigram on Miss Tree (Mrs. Bradshaw)? it is quite a little fairy tale ; "On this tree when a nightingale settles and sings, The tree will return her as good as she brings." Luttrell is indeed a most pleasant companion. None of the talkers whom I meet in London society can slide in a brilliant thing with such readiness as he does. I was one day not a little surprised at being told by Moore that, in consequence of the article on his See his Letters to Julia and Crockford House.-ED. 1 Poems in The Edinburgh Review, he had called out Jeffrey, who at that time was in London. He asked me to lend him a pair of pistols: I said, and truly, that I had none.t Moore then went to William Spencer to borrow pistols, and to talk to him about the duel; and Spencer, who was delighted with this confidence, did not fail to blab the matter to Lord Fincastle, and also, I believe, to some women of rank. I was at Spencer's house in the forenoon, anxious to learn the issue of the duel, when a messenger arrived with the tidings that Moore and Jeffrey were in custody, and with a request from Moore that Spencer would bail him. Spencer did not seem much inclined to do so, remarking that "he could not well go out, for it was already twelve o'clock, and he had to be dressed by four !" So I went to Bow Street and bailed Moore.§-The ques * Vol. viii. 456.-ED. "William Spencer being the only one of all my friends whom I thought likely to furnish me with these sine-qua-nons [pistols], I hastened to confide to him my wants," &c. Moore's Memoirs, &c. vol. i. 202. But Moore's recollection of the particulars connected with the duel was somewhat imperfect: see the next note but one. -ED. Afterwards Lord Dunmore.-ED. § "Though I had sent for William Spencer, I am not quite sure that it was he that acted as my bail, or whether it was not Rogers tion now was, whether Moore and Jeffrey should still fight or not. I secretly consulted General Fitzpatrick, who gave it as his decided opinion that "Mr. Jeffrey was not called upon to accept a second challenge," insinuating, of course, that Moore was bound to send one. I took care not to divulge what the General had said: and the poet and critic were eventually reconciled by means of Horner and myself: they shook hands with each other in the garden behind my house. So heartily has Moore repented of having published Little's Poems, that I have seen him shed tears, tears of deep contrition, when we were talking of them. Young ladies read his Lalla Rookh without being aware (I presume) of the grossness of The Veiled Prophet. These lines by Mr. Sneyd are amusing enough; that so officiated. at the office," &c. "Lalla Rookh Is a naughty book By Tommy Moore, Who has written four, I am, however, certain that the latter joined us Each warmer Than the former, So the most recent Is the least decent." Moore borrowed from me Lord Thurlow's Poems, and forthwith wrote that ill-natured article on them in The Edinburgh Review. It made me angry; for Lord Thurlow, with all his eccentricity, was a man of genius: but the public chose to laugh at him, and Moore, who always follows the world's opinion, of course did so too.-I like Lord Thurlow's verses on Sidney.t * Vol. xxiii. 411.-ED. † I know not which of Lord Thurlow's pieces on Sidney (for there are several) was alluded to by Mr. Rogers. One of them is,On beholding the portraiture of Sir Philip Sidney in the gallery at Penshurst ; "The man that looks, sweet Sidney, in thy face, And the soft image of departed grace, t |