All this was partially illustrated in the circle to which I was now presented. Mr. Clarke was not an author, and he was by much the most interesting person of the whole. He had travelled, and, particularly, he had travelled in Italy--then an aristocratic distinction; had a small, but interesting, picture gallery; and, at this time, amused himself by studying Greek, for which purpose he and myself met at sunrise every morning through the summer, and read Æschylus together. These meetings, at which we sometimes had the company of any stranger who might happen to be an amateur in Greek, were pleasant enough to my schoolboy vanity--placing me in the position of teacher and guide to men old enough to be my grandfathers. But the dinner parties, at which the literati sometimes assembled in force, were far from being equally amusing. Mr. Roscoe[26] was simple and manly in his demeanour; but there was the feebleness of a mere _belle-lettrist_, a mere man of _virtù_, in the style of his sentiments on most subjects. Yet he was a politician, and took an ardent interest in politics, and wrote upon politics--all which are facts usually presuming some vigour of mind. And he wrote, moreover, on the popular side, and with a boldness which, in that day, when such politics were absolutely disreputable, seemed undeniably to argue great moral courage. But these were accidents arising out of his connexion with the Whig party, or (to speak more accurately) with the _Opposition_ party in Parliament; by whom he was greatly caressed. Mr. Fox, the Duchess of Devonshire, Mr. Sheridan, and all the _powers_ on that side of the question, showed him the most marked attention in a great variety of forms; and this it was, not any native propensity for such speculations, which drove him into pamphleteering upon political questions. Mr. Fox (himself the very feeblest of party writers) was probably sincere in his admiration of Mr. Roscoe's pamphlets; and did seriously think him, as I know that he described him in private letters, an antagonist well matched against Burke; and _that_ he afterwards became in form. The rest of the world wondered at his presumption, or at his gross miscalculation of his own peculiar powers. An eminent person, in after years (about 1815), speaking to me of Mr. Roscoe's political writings, especially those which had connected his name with Burke, declared that he always felt of him in that relation not so much as of a feeble man, but absolutely as of a _Sporus_ (that was his very expression), or a man emasculated. Right or wrong in his views, he showed the most painful defect of good sense and prudence in confronting his own understanding, so plain and homely, with the Machiavelian Briareus of a hundred arms--the Titan whom he found in Burke; all the advantages of a living antagonist over a dead one could not compensate odds so fearful in original power.