'A wreck of glasses attests the presence of Swinburne. He compared himself to Dante; repeatedly named himself with Shelley and Dante, to the exclusion of all other poets; assured me that he was a great man only because he had been properly flogged at Eton, the last time for reading _The Scarlet Letter_ when he should have been reading Greek; confessed to never having read Helvétius, though he talked of Diderot and Rousseau, and finally informed me that two glasses of green Chartreuse were a perfect antidote to one of yellow, or two of yellow to one of green. It was immediately after this that Theodore Watts- Dunton took charge of him and reduced him to absolute respectability.' Sir Charles tells stories of a remarkable political and literary personage. 'Lord Houghton's anecdotes were rendered good by the remarkable people that he had known.... He once about this time said to me: "I have known everyone in the present century that was worth knowing." With a little doubt in my mind, I murmured, "Napoleon Bonaparte?" "I was taken to Elba when I was a boy," said Houghton instantly. I thought his recollections of the first Emperor apocryphal. There was, however, a chance that the father--who was in Italy--did take the child to Elba.' Another story, of which Lord Houghton was not the narrator, but the subject, came to Sir Charles during a party at Lady Pollock's, and concerned the dinner which had preceded the party. 'It had been at seven o'clock in honour of Tennyson, who would not dine at any other hour, and Tennyson sat on one side of the hostess, and Lord Houghton on the other; and the latter was cross at being made to dine at 7, preferring to dine at 8.30, and sup, after dinner, at 11. The conversation turned on a poem which had been written by Tennyson in his youth, and Tennyson observed "I have not even a copy myself--no one has it." To which Lord Houghton answered: "I have one. I have copies of all the rubbish you ever wrote."--A pause.--"When you are dead I mean to publish them all. It will make my fortune and destroy your reputation." After this Tennyson was heard to murmur, "Beast!" It must have been a real pleasure to him to find himself survive his brother poet.