"A young American, named Coolidge, called on me not many months ago. He was intelligent, very handsome, and not more than twenty years old, according to appearances; a little romantic, but that sits well upon youth, and mighty fond of poesy, as may be suspected from his approaching me in my cavern. He brought me a message from an old servant of my family (Joe Murray), and told me that _he_ (Mr. Coolidge) had obtained a copy of my bust from Thorwaldsen, at Rome, to send to America. I confess I was more flattered by this young enthusiasm of a solitary Trans-Atlantic traveller, than if they had decreed me a statue in the Paris Pantheon (I have seen emperors and demagogues cast down from their pedestals even in my own time, and Grattan's name razed from the street called after him in Dublin); I say that I was more flattered by it, because it was _single, unpolitical_, and was without motive or ostentation--the pure and warm feeling of a boy for the poet he admired. It must have been expensive, though;--_I_ would not pay the price of a Thorwaldsen bust for any human head and shoulders, except Napoleon's, or my children's, or some '_absurd womankind's_,' as Monkbarn's calls them--or my sister's. If asked _why_, then, I sate for my own?--Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse, Esq., and for no one else. A _picture_ is a different matter;--every body sits for their picture;--but a bust looks like putting up pretensions to permanency, and smacks something of a hankering for public fame rather than private remembrance. "Whenever an American requests to see me (which is not unfrequently) I comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom by their firmness without excess; and, secondly, because these Trans-Atlantic visits, 'few and-far between' make me feel as if talking with posterity from the other side of the Styx. In a century or two, the new English and Spanish Atlantides will be masters of the old countries, in all probability, as Greece and Europe overcame their mother Asia in the older or earlier ages, as they are called." EXTRACT FROM A DIARY OF LORD BYRON, 1821. "Ravenna, January 12th, 1821. "I have found out the seal cut on Murray's letter. It is meant for Walter Scott--or _Sir_ Walter--he is the first poet knighted since Sir Richard Blackmore. But it does not do him justice. Scott's--particularly when he recites---is a very intelligent countenance, and this seal says nothing. "Scott is certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. His novels are a new literature in themselves, and his poetry as good as any--if not better (only on an erroneous system)--and only ceased to be so popular, because the vulgar learned were tired of hearing 'Aristides called the Just,' and Scott the Best, and ostracised him.