I have purposely set before you two strongly contrasted types of English literary life in that day--in William Hazlitt and Henry Hallam--the first representing very nearly what we would call the Bohemian element--ready to-day for an article in the _Edinburgh Review_, and to-morrow for a gibe in the _Examiner_, or a piece of diablerie in the _London Magazine_; Hallam, on the other hand, representing the sober and orderly traditions, colored by the life and work of such men as Hume, Roscoe, and Gibbon. _Queen of a Salon._ Another group of literary people, of a very varied sort, we should have found in the salons of my Lady Blessington,[55] who used to hold court on the Thames--now by Piccadilly, and again at Gore House--in the early part of this century. She was herself a writer; nor is her personal history without its significance, as an outgrowth of times when George IV. was setting the pace for those ambitious of social distinction. She was the quick-witted daughter of an Irish country gentleman of the Lucius O’Trigger sort--nicknamed Beau Power. He loved a whip and fast horses--also dogs, powder, and blare. He wore white-topped boots, with showy frills and ruffles; he drank hard, swore harder--wasted his fortune, abused his wife, but was “very fine” to the end. He was as cruel as he was fine; shot a peasant once, in cold blood, and dragged him home after his saddle beast. He worried his daughter, Marguerite (Lady Blessington), into marrying, at fifteen, a man whom she detested. It gave relief, however, from paternal protection, until the husband proved worse than the father, and separation ensued--made good (after some years of tumultuous, uneasy life) by the violent and providential death of the recreant husband. Shortly after, she married Lord Blessington, a rich Irish nobleman, very much blasé, seven years her senior, but kind and always generous with her. Then came travel in a princely way over the Continent, with long stays in pleasant places, and such lavish spendings as put palaces at their disposal--of all which a readable and gossipy record is given in her _Idler in Italy_ and _Idler in France_--books well known, in their day, in America. Of course she encountered in these ramblings Landor, Shelley, Byron, and all notable Englishmen, and when she returned to London it was to establish that brilliant little court already spoken of. She was admirably fitted for sovereign of such a court; she was witty, ready, well-instructed; was beautiful, too, and knew every art of the toilet.[56]