"Sheridan's liking for me (whether he was not mystifying me, I do not know, but Lady Caroline Lamb and others told me that he said the same both before and after he knew me,) was founded upon 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.' He told me that he did not care about poetry, (or about mine--at least, any but that poem of mine,) but he was sure, from that and other symptoms, I should make an orator, if I would but take to speaking, and grow a parliament man. He never ceased harping upon this to me to the last; and I remember my old tutor, Dr. Drury, had the same notion when I was a _boy_; but it never was my turn of inclination to try. I spoke once or twice, as all young peers do, as a kind of introduction into public life; but dissipation, shyness, haughty and reserved opinions, together with the short time I lived in England after my majority (only about five years in all), prevented me from resuming the experiment. As far as it went, it was not discouraging, particularly my _first_ speech (I spoke three or four times in all); but just after it, my poem of Childe Harold was published, and nobody ever thought about my _prose_ afterwards, nor indeed did I; it became to me a secondary and neglected object, though I sometimes wonder to myself if I should have succeeded." * * * * * His immediate impressions with respect to the success of his first speech may be collected from a letter addressed soon after to Mr. Hodgson. LETTER 90. TO MR. HODGSON. "8. St. James's Street, March 5. 1812. "My dear Hodgson,