'Whenever the drama was mentioned, he defended the unities most eagerly, and usually attacked Shakspeare. A gentleman present, on hearing his anti-Shakspearean opinions, rushed out of the room, and afterwards entered his protest most anxiously against such doctrines. Lord B. was quite delighted with this, and redoubled the severity of his criticism. I had heard that Shelley once said to Lord B. in his extraordinary way, "B., you are a most wonderful man." "How?" "You are envious of Shakspeare." I, therefore, never expressed the smallest astonishment at hearing Shakspeare abused; but remarked, it was curious that Lord B. was so strangely conversant in an author of such inferior merit, and that he should so continually have the most melodious lines of Shakspeare in his mouth as examples of blank verse. He said once, when we were alone, "I like to astonish Englishmen: they come abroad full of Shakspeare, and contempt for the dramatic literature of other nations; they think it blasphemy to find a fault in his writings, which are full of them. People talk of the tendency of my writings, and yet read the sonnets to Master Hughes." Lord B. certainly did not admire the French tragedians enthusiastically. I said to him, "There is a subject for the Drama which, I believe, has never been touched, and which, I think, affords the greatest possible scope for the representation of all that is sublime in human character--but then it would require an abandonment of the unities--the attack of Maurice of Saxony on Charles V., which saved the Protestant religion; it is a subject of more than national interest." He said it was certainly a fine subject; but he held that the drama could not exist without a strict adherence to the unities; and besides, he knew well he had failed in his dramatic attempts, and that he intended to make no more. He said he thought "Sardanapalus" his best tragedy. 'The memory of Lord B. was very extraordinary; it was not the mere mechanical memory which can repeat the advertisements of a newspaper and such nonsense; but of all the innumerable novels which he had read, he seemed to recollect perfectly the story and every scene of merit.