* * * *

“Curran!  Curran’s the man who struck me most[102].  Such imagination! there never was any thing like it that ever I saw or heard of.  His published life—­his published speeches, give you no idea of the man—­none at all.  He was a machine of imagination, as some one said that Piron was an epigrammatic machine.

“I did not see a great deal of Curran—­only in 1813; but I met him at home (for he used to call on me), and in society, at Mackintosh’s, Holland House, &c. &c. and he was wonderful even to me, who had seen many remarkable men of the time.”

* * * *

“* * * (commonly called long * * *, a very clever man, but odd) complained of our friend Scrope B. Davies, in riding, that he had a stitch in his side.  ‘I don’t wonder at it,’ said Scrope, ’for you ride like a tailor.’  Whoever had seen * * * on horseback, with his very tall figure on a small nag, would not deny the justice of the repartee.”

* * * *

“When B * * was obliged (by that affair of poor M * *, who thence acquired the name of ’Dick the Dandy-killer’—­it was about money, and debt, and all that) to retire to France, he knew no French, and having obtained a grammar for the purpose of study, our friend Scrope Davies was asked what progress Brummell had made in French; he responded, ’that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the Elements.’

“I have put this pun into Beppo, which is ’a fair exchange and no robbery; for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners (as he owned himself) by repeating occasionally, as his own, some of the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in the morning.”

* * * *

“* * * is a good man, rhymes well (if not wisely), but is a bore.  He seizes you by the button.  One night of a rout, at Mrs. Hope’s, he had fastened upon me, notwithstanding my symptoms of manifest distress, (for I was in love, and had just nicked a minute when neither mothers, nor husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips, were near my then idol, who was beautiful as the statues of the gallery where we stood at the time,)—­* * *, I say, had seized upon me by the button and the heart-strings, and spared neither.  W. Spencer, who likes fun, and don’t dislike mischief, saw my case, and coming up to us both, took me by the hand, and pathetically bade me farewell; ‘for,’ said he, ’I see it is all over with you.’ * * * then went away. Sic me servavit Apollo.”

* * * *

“I remember seeing Blucher in the London assemblies, and never saw any thing of his age less venerable.  With the voice and manners of a recruiting sergeant, he pretended to the honours of a hero,—­just as if a stone could be worshipped because a man had stumbled over it.”

[Footnote 100:  Petrarch was, it appears, also in his youth, a Dandy.  “Recollect,” he says, in a letter to his brother, “the time, when we wore white habits, on which the least spot, or a plait ill placed, would have been a subject of grief; when our shoes were so tight we suffered martyrdom,” &c.]