"When the bailiff (for I have seen most kinds of life) came upon me in 1815 to seize my chattels, (being a peer of parliament, my person was beyond him,) being curious (as is my habit), I first asked him "what extents elsewhere he had for government?" upon which he showed me one upon _one house only_ for _seventy thousand pounds_! Next I asked him if he had nothing for Sheridan? "Oh--Sheridan!" said he; "ay, I have this" (pulling out a pocket-book, &c.); "but, my Lord, I have been in Sheridan's house a twelvemonth at a time--a civil gentleman--knows how to deal with _us_," &c. &c. &c. Our own business was then discussed, which was none of the easiest for me at that time. But the man was civil, and (what I valued more) communicative. I had met many of his brethren, years before, in affairs of my friends, (commoners, that is,) but this was the first (or second) on my own account.--A civil man; fee'd accordingly; probably he anticipated as much."] [Footnote 96: For this story, however, there was so far a foundation that the practice to which he had accustomed himself from boyhood, of having loaded pistols always near him at night, was considered so strange a propensity as to be included in that list of symptoms (sixteen, I believe, in number,) which were submitted to medical opinion, in proof of his insanity. Another symptom was the emotion, almost to hysterics, which he had exhibited on seeing Kean act Sir Giles Overreach. But the most plausible of all the grounds, as he himself used to allow, on which these articles of impeachment against his sanity were drawn up, was an act of violence committed by him on a favourite old watch that had been his companion from boyhood, and had gone with him to Greece. In a fit of vexation and rage, brought on by some of those humiliating embarrassments to which he was now almost daily a prey, he furiously dashed this watch upon the hearth, and ground it to pieces among the ashes with the poker.] [Footnote 97: Of the abuse lavished upon him, the following extract from a poem, published at this time, will give some idea:-- "From native England, that endured too long The ceaseless burden of his impious song; His mad career of crimes and follies run, And grey in vice, when life was scarce begun; He goes, in foreign lands prepared to find A life more suited to his guilty mind; Where other climes new pleasures may supply For that pall'd taste, and that unhallow'd eye;-- Wisely he seeks some yet untrodden shore, For those who know him less may prize him more." In a rhyming pamphlet, too, entitled "A Poetical Epistle from Delia, addressed to Lord Byron," the writer thus charitably expresses herself:--