Byron had more good in his nature than he was fond of letting out: whether he was a soured misanthrope, or whether his _vein_ lay that way in poetry, and he felt it necessary to fit his demeanor to it, are matters far beyond me. Mr. Crabb Robinson[438] told me the following story more than once. He was at Charles Lamb's chambers in the Temple when Wordsworth came in, with the new _Edinburgh Review_ in his hand, and fume on his countenance. "These reviewers," said he, "put me out of patience! Here is a young man--they say he is a lord--who has written a volume of poetry; and these fellows, just because he is a lord, set upon him, laugh at him, and sneer at his writing. The young man will do something, if he goes on as he has begun. But these reviewers seem to think {276} that nobody may write poetry, unless he lives in a garret." Crabb Robinson told this long after to Lady Byron, who said, "Ah! if Byron had known that, he would never have attacked Wordsworth. He went one day to meet Wordsworth at dinner; when he came home I said, 'Well, how did the young poet get on with the old one?' 'Why, to tell you the truth,' said he, 'I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to the end, and that was--_reverence_!'" Lady Byron told my wife that her husband had a very great respect for Wordsworth. I suppose he would have said--as the Archangel said to his Satan--"Our difference is po[li = e]tical." I suspect that Fielding would, if all were known, be ranked among the unlucky railers at supposed paradox. In his _Miscellanies_ (1742, 8vo) he wrote a satire on the Chrysippus or Guinea, an animal which multiplies itself by division, like the polypus. This he supposes to have been drawn up by Petrus Gualterus, meaning the famous usurer, Peter Walter. He calls it a paper "proper to be read before the R----l Society": and next year, 1743, a quarto reprint was made to resemble a paper in the _Philosophical Transactions_. So far as I can make out, one object is ridicule of what the zoologists said about the polypus: a reprint in the form of the _Transactions_ was certainly satire on the Society, not on Peter Walter and his knack of multiplying guineas. Old poets have recognized the quadrature of the circle as a well-known difficulty. Dante compares himself, when bewildered, to a geometer who cannot find the principle on which the circle is to be measured: "Quale e 'l geometra che tutto s' affige Per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritruova, Pensando qual principio ond' egli indige."[439] {277} And Quarles[440] speaks as follows of the _summum bonum_: "Or is't a tart idea, to procure An edge, and keep the practic soul in ure, Like that dear chymic dust, or puzzling quadrature?"