"This interview was accidental. I never went to the levee; for having seen the courts of Mussulman and Catholic sovereigns, my curiosity was sufficiently allayed; and my politics being as perverse as my rhymes, I had, in fact, 'no business there.' To be thus praised by your Sovereign must be gratifying to you; and if that gratification is not alloyed by the communication being made through me, the bearer of it will consider himself very fortunately and sincerely,
"P.S.--Excuse this scrawl, scratched in a great hurry, and just after a journey."
During the summer of this year, he paid visits to some of his noble friends, and, among others, to the Earl of Jersey and the Marquis of Lansdowne. "In 1812," he says, "at Middleton (Lord Jersey's), amongst a goodly company of lords, ladies, and wits, &c., there was (* * *.) [49]
"Erskine, too! Erskine was there; good, but intolerable. He jested, he talked, he did every thing admirably, but then he would be applauded for the same thing twice over. He would read his own verses, his own paragraph, and tell his own story again and again; and then the 'Trial by Jury!!!' I almost wished it abolished, for I sat next him at dinner. As I had read his published speeches, there was no occasion to repeat them to me.
"C * * (the fox-hunter), nicknamed '_Cheek_ C * *,' and I, sweated the claret, being the only two who did so. C * *, who loves his bottle, and had no notion of meeting with a 'bon-vivant' in a scribbler[50], in making my eulogy to somebody one evening, summed it up in--'By G----d he drinks like a man.'
"Nobody drank, however, but C * * and I. To be sure, there was little occasion, for we swept off what was on the table (a most splendid board, as may be supposed, at Jersey's) very sufficiently. However, we carried our liquor discreetly, like the Baron of Bradwardine."
[Footnote 49: A review, somewhat too critical, of some of the guests is here omitted.]
[Footnote 50: For the first day or two, at Middleton, he did not join his noble host's party till after dinner, but took his scanty repast of biscuits and soda water in his own room. Being told by somebody that the gentleman above mentioned had pronounced such habits to be "effeminate," he resolved to show the "fox-hunter" that he could be, on occasion, as good a _bon-vivant_ as himself, and, by his prowess at the claret next day, after dinner, drew forth from Mr. C * * the eulogium here recorded.]