"'I'd give the lands of Deloraine
Dark Musgrave were alive again!'
_that is_
'I would give many a Sugar Cane
Monk Lewis were alive again!'
"Lewis said to me, 'Why do you talk 'Venetian' (such as I could
talk, not very fine to be sure) to the Venetians, and not the usual
Italian?' I answered, partly from habit and partly to be understood,
if possible. 'It may be so,' said Lewis, 'but it sounds to me like
talking with a 'brogue' to an _Irishman_.'"
In a MS. note by Sir Walter Scott on these passages from Byron's
'Detached Thoughts', he says,
"Mat had queerish eyes; they projected like those of some insect, and
were flattish in their orbit. His person was extremely small and
boyish; he was, indeed, the least man I ever saw to be strictly well
and neatly made. I remember a picture of him by Saunders being handed
round at Dalkeith House. The artist had ungenerously flung a dark
folding mantle round the form, under which was half hid a dagger, or
dark lanthorn, or some such cut-throat appurtenance. With all this the
features were preserved and ennobled. It passed from hand to hand into
that of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, who, hearing the general voice
affirm that it was very like, said aloud, 'Like Mat Lewis? Why, that
picture is like a 'man'.' He looked, and lo! Mat Lewis's head was at
his elbow. His boyishness went through life with him. He was a child,
and a spoiled child, but a child of high imagination, so that he
wasted himself in ghost stories and German nonsense.
Pages:
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435