"my watch is gone!"-"Yes," answered General F., "I know it is; I saw your friend take it.”—“ Saw him take it! and you made no attempt to stop him?" -"Really, you and he appeared to be on such good terms with each other, that I did not choose to interfere."

I was walking through the Louvre with Fox, when he all but cut Mackintosh, passing him with a nod and a “How d'ye do?" and he gave me to understand that he had done so because he was angry at Mackintosh for having accepted a place in India from the Tories. Fitzpatrick, however, told me the real cause of Fox's anger; and it was this;-Mrs. Mackintosh had not called upon Mrs. Fox, whom Fox had recently acknowledged as his wife. Such slight things sometimes influence the conduct of great men.

Most unfortunately, one morning during breakfast at St. Anne's Hill, I repeated and praised Goldsmith's song, "When lovely woman stoops to folly," &c., quite forgetting that it must necessarily hurt the feelings of Mrs. Fox. She seemed a good deal discomposed by it. Fox merely remarked, "Some people write damned nonsense."

When Buonaparte said to Fox, he was

vinced that Windham was implicated in the contrivance of the Infernal Machine, Fox warmly repelled such an aspersion on Windham's character, assuring the First Consul that no Englishman would degrade himself by being concerned in so vile a business.I told this to Windham, who answered very coldly, "Well, I should have said the same of him under similar circumstances.”—I have heard Windham speak very disrespectfully of Fox in the House, after their political quarrel.

Fox said that Sir Joshua Reynolds never enjoyed Richmond, that he used to say the human face was his landscape. Fox did not much admire Sir Joshua's pictures in the grand style; he greatly preferred those of a playful character: he did not like much even the Ugolino; but he thought the boys in the Nativity were charming.

Once, at Paris, talking to Fox about Le Sueur's pictures, I said that I doubted if any artist had ever excelled Le Sueur in painting white garments. Fox replied that he thought Andrea Sacchi superior to

Where Reynolds had a villa-In Mr. Rogers's collection of pictures is an exquisite landscape by Sir Joshua,-a view from Richmond Hill, with the features of the scene a little altered.-ED.

Le Sueur in that respect. I mention this to show that Fox was not only fond of painting, but had given minute attention to it.*

He was an eager chess-player: I have heard him say, on coming down to breakfast, that he had not been able to sleep for thinking about some particular move.

While young Betty was in all his glory, I went with Fox and Mrs. Fox, after dining with them in Arlington Street, to see him act Hamlet; and, during the play-scene, Fox, to my infinite surprise, said, "This is finer than Garrick."t-How wise it was in Kemble and Mrs. Siddons quietly to withdraw from the stage during the Betty furor, and then as quietly to return to it, as if nothing unusual had occurred!-

For an account of the delight which Fox received from visiting the Louvre, see Trotter's Memoirs of Fox, p. 209.-ED.

† Such criticism will now seem (and undoubtedly is) preposterous. But we must recollect that there was a marvellous charm about the young Roscius.-"Northcote then spoke of the boy, as he always calls him (Master Betty). He asked if I had ever seen him act; and I said, Yes, and was one of his admirers. He answered, 'Oh yes, it was such a beautiful effusion of natural sensibility; and then that graceful play of the limbs in youth gave such an advantage over every one about him. Humphreys (the artist) said, 'He had never seen the little Apollo off the pedestal before."" Hazlitt's Conversations of Northcote, p. 23.-ED.

Fox said that Barry's Romeo was superior to Garrick's.

"If I had a son," observed Fox, "I should insist on his frequently writing English verses, whether he had a taste for poetry or not, because that sort of composition forces one to consider very carefully the exact meanings of words."

I introduced Wordsworth to Fox, having taken him with me to a ball given by Mrs. Fox. “I am very glad to see you, Mr. Wordsworth, though I am not of your faction," was all that Fox said to him,meaning that he admired a school of poetry different from that to which Wordsworth belonged.

Fox considered Burnet's style to be perfect. We were once talking of an historian's introducing occasionally the words of other writers into his work without marking them as quotations, when Fox said, "that the style of some of the authors so treated might need a little mending, but that Burnet's required none."

He thought that Robertson's account of Columbus was very pleasingly written.

He was so fond of Dryden, that he had some idea of editing his works. It was absurd, he said, not to

print the originals by Chaucer along with Dryden's versions of them; and absurd in Malone to print all Dryden's Prefaces by themselves. "Dryden's imitations of Horace," he would say, "are better than the originals: how fine this is !

'Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call to-day his own;

He who, secure within, can say,

To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd to-day;
Be fair or foul, or rain or shine,

The joys I have possess'd, in spite of Fate, are mine;
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.'"*

One afternoon, at his own house, Fox was talking to me very earnestly about Dryden, when he suddenly recollected that (being in office) he ought to make his appearance at the King's levee. It was so late that, not having time to change his dress, he set off for Buckingham House "accoutred as he was;" and when somebody remarked to him that his coat was not quite the thing, he replied, "No

Twenty-ninth Ode of the First Book of Horace paraphrased,

&c.-ED.