I hire myself unto Griffiths, and my poesy [3] comes out on Saturday.
Hobhouse is here; I shall tell him to write. My stone is gone for the
present, but I fear is part of my habit. We _all_ talk of a visit to
Cambridge.
Yours ever,
B.
[Footnote 1: For Byron's speech, February 27, 1812, see Appendix II.
(i).] Grenville said,
"There never was a maxim of greater wisdom than that uttered by the
noble lord [Byron] who had so ably addressed their lordships that
night for the first time"
('Hansard', vol. xxi. p. 977). Moore quotes a passage from Byron's
'Detached Thoughts':
"Sheridan's liking for me (whether he was not mystifying me I do not
know, but Lady Caroline Lamb and others told me that he said the same
both before and after he knew me) was founded upon 'English Bards, and
Scotch Reviewers'. He told me that he did not care about poetry (or
about mine--at least, any but 'that' poem of mine), but he was sure,
from 'that' and other symptoms, I should make an orator, if I would
but take to speaking, and grow a parliament man. He never ceased
harping upon this to me to the last; and I remember my old tutor, Dr.
Drury, had the same notion when I was a 'boy'; but it never was my
turn of inclination to try. I spoke once or twice, as all young peers
do, as a kind of introduction into public life; but dissipation,
shyness, haughty and reserved opinions, together with the short time I
lived in England after my majority (only about five years in all),
prevented me from resuming the experiment.
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