Tuesday, March 15th [1814]
Dined yesterday with Rogers, Mackintosh, and Sharpe. Sheridan could not come.
Sharpe
told several very amusing anecdotes of Henderson, the actor
. Stayed till late, and came home, having drunk so much
tea
, that I did not get to sleep till six this morning. R.
says
I am to be in
this Quarterly
—cut up, I presume, as they "hate us youth."
N'importe
. As Sharpe was passing by the doors of some debating society (the Westminster Forum), in his way to dinner, he saw rubricked on the wall
Scott's
name and
mine
—"Which the best poet?" being the question of the evening; and I suppose all the Templars and
would-bes
took our rhymes in vain in the course of the controversy. Which had the greater show of hands, I neither know nor care; but I feel the coupling of the names as a compliment—though I think Scott deserves better company.
Wedderburn Webster called—Lord Erskine, Lord Holland, etc., etc. Wrote to ——
The Corsair
report. She says she don't wonder, since "Conrad is so
like
." It is odd that one, who knows me so thoroughly, should tell me this to my face. However, if she don't know, nobody can.
Mackintosh is, it seems, the writer of the defensive letter in the
Morning Chronicle
. If so, it is very kind, and more than I did for myself.
Told
Murray
to secure for me Bandello's Italian Novels
at the sale to-morrow. To me they will be
nuts
. Redde a satire on myself, called "Anti-Byron," and told Murray to publish it if he liked. The object of the author is to prove me an atheist and a systematic conspirator against law and government. Some of the verse is good; the prose I don't quite understand. He asserts that my "deleterious works" have had "an effect upon civil society, which requires," etc., etc., etc., and his own poetry. It is a lengthy poem, and a long preface, with an harmonious title-page. Like the fly in the fable, I seem to have got upon a wheel which makes much dust; but, unlike the said fly, I do not take it all for my own raising.
A
letter
from
Bella
, which I answered. I shall be in love with her again if I don't take care.
I shall begin a more regular system of reading soon.
Footnote 1:
John Henderson, the Bath Roscius (1747-1785), without any great personal advantages, was, according to Mrs. Siddons, "a fine actor ... the soul of intelligence." Rogers (
Table-Talk
, ed. 1887, p. 110) says,
"Henderson was a truly great actor: his Hamlet and his Falstaff were equally good. He was a very fine reader too: in his comic readings, superior, of course, to Mrs. Siddons: his John Gilpin was marvellous."
In Sharp's
Letters and Essays
(ed. 1834, pp. 16-18) will be found an interesting letter to Henderson, written a few days before his death, giving an account of John Kemble's first appearance on the London boards, in the character of "Hamlet."
"There has not," says Sharp, "been such a first appearance since yours; yet Nature, though she has been bountiful to him in figure and feature, has denied him a voice.... You have been so long without a 'brother near the throne,' that it will perhaps be serviceable to you to be obliged to bestir yourself in Hamlet, Macbeth, Lord Townley, and Maskwell; but in Lear, Richard, Falstaff, and Benedict, you have nothing to fear, not-withstanding the known fickleness of the public and its love of novelty."
Footnote 2:
Henry IV
, Part I. act ii. sc. 2.
Footnote 3:
Matteo Bandello (1480-1562), a native of Piedmont, became in 1550 Bishop of Agen. His 214 tales, in the manner of Boccaccio, were published at Milan (1554-73). In the Catalogue of Byron's books, "sold by auction by Mr. Evans, at his house, No. 26, Pall Mall, on Friday, April 5, 1816, and following day," appears "Bandello,
Novelle
, 8 vol., wanting vol. 9,
Livorn
, 1791."
Footnote 4:
Miss Milbanke, afterwards Lady Byron.
