Whether the memory of the Tompkins episode haunted me, or whether it was the effect of an excellent dinner enjoyed with "Labby" just previously, I do not know, but certain it is that on one never-to-be-forgotten evening I saw a ghost--a _bonâ-fide_ ghost, who entered my sleeping apartment without permission, and addressed me without the assistance of a "medium." He was a ghost of average height and build, and I observed that he kept one foot very carefully concealed beneath his long, cloudy draperies, which were disposed about him in the fashion of the classic Greek. Upon his head, which was covered with clustering curls fit to adorn the brows of Apollo, he wore a wreath of laurels whose leaves were traced in light, and these cast a brilliant circle of supernatural radiance around him. In one hand he grasped a scroll, and as he turned his face upon me he beckoned with this scroll, slowly and majestically, after the style of Hamlet's father on the battlements of Elsinore. I trembled, but had no power to move. Again he beckoned, and his eyes flashed fire. "My lord----!" I stammered, shrinking beneath his indignant gaze, and fervently hoping that I was not the object of his evident wrath. "Lord me no lords!" said a deep voice that seemed to quiver with disdain. "Speak, puny mortal! Knowest thou me?" Know him! I should think I did. There was no mistaking him. He was BYRON all over--Byron, more thoroughly Byronic of aspect than any portrait has ever made him. Involuntarily I thought of the present Lord Wentworth and his occasionally flabby allusions to his "Grandfather," and smiled at the comparison between ancestor and descendant. My ghostly visitant had a sense of humour, and, reading my thoughts, smiled too. "I see thou hast wit," he was good enough to observe in more pacific accents. "Hear me, therefore, and mark my every word! There are such follies in this age--such literary rascals, such damned rogues of rhymesters--oh, don't be startled! every one swears in Hades--that I have writ some lines and remodelled others, to suit the exigencies of the modern school of Shams. Never did Art stand at a premium in England, but God knows it should not fall to zero as it is rapidly doing. Listen! and move not while I speak; my lines shall burn themselves upon thy brain till thou inscribe and print them for the world to read; then, and then only, having done my bidding, shalt thou again be free!" I bowed my head submissively and begged the noble Ghost to proceed, whereupon he unfolded his scroll, and read, with infinite gusto, the following:-- "ENGLISH SCRIBES AND SMALL REVIEWERS. "Still must I hear? Shall SWINBURNE mouth and scream His wordy couplets in a drunken dream, And I not sing, lest haply small reviews Should dub me 'dead' and forthwith damn my muse? No! My proud spirit shall not suffer wrong; 'Booms' are my theme--let satire be my song.