{12b} This would seem to show that poet and prophet are synonymous, the noble bard having afterwards returned to England, and again quitted it, under domestic circumstances painfully notorious. His good-humoured forgiveness of the Authors has already been alluded to in the Preface. Nothing of this illustrious poet, however trivial, can be otherwise than interesting. “We know him well.” At Mr. Murray’s dinner-table the annotator met him and Sir John Malcolm. Lord Byron talked of intending to travel in Persia. “What must I do when I set off?” said he to Sir John. “Cut off your buttons!” “My buttons! what, these metal ones!” “Yes; the Persians are in the main very honest fellows; but if you go thus bedizened, you will infallibly be murdered for your buttons!” At a dinner at Monk Lewis’s chambers in the Albany, Lord Byron expressed to the writer his determination not to go there again, adding, “I never will dine with a middle-aged man who fills up his table with young ensigns, and has looking-glass panels to his book-cases.” Lord Byron, when one of the Drury-lane Committee of Management, challenged the writer to sing alternately (like the swains in Virgil) the praises of Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, who, by-the-bye, was hissed off the stage for an imputed intimacy of which she was quite innocent. The contest ran as fellows: “Wake, muse of fire, your ardent lyre, Pour forth your amorous ditty, But first profound, in duly bound, Applaud the new Committee; Their scenic art from Thespis’ cart All jaded nags discarding, To London drove this queen of love, Enchanting Mrs. Mardyn. Though tides of love around her rove, I fear she’ll choose Pactolus— In that bright surge bards ne’er immerge. So I must e’en swim solus. ‘Out, out, alas!’ ill-fated gas, That shin’st round Covent Garden, Thy ray how flat, compared with that From eye of Mrs. Mardyn!” And so on. The reader has, no doubt, already discovered “which is the justice, and which is the thief.” Lord Byron at that time wore a very narrow cravat of white sarsnet, with the shirt-collar falling over it; a black coat and waist-coat, and very broad white trousers to hide his lame foot—these were of Russia duck in the morning, and jean in the evening. His watch-chain had a number of small gold seals appended to it, and was looped up to a button of his waistcoat. His face was void of colour; he wore no whiskers. His eyes were grey, fringed with long black lashes; and his air was imposing, but rather supercilious. He under-valued David Hume; denying his claim to genius on account of his bulk, and calling him, from the Heroic Epistle, “The fattest hog in Epicurus’ sly.”