, the manager of this combustible concern, to inquire whether this farce was not converted into fuel with about two thousand other unactable manuscripts, which of course were in great peril, if not actually consumed. Now was not this characteristic? — the ruling passions of Pope are nothing to it.
the poor distracted manager was bewailing the loss of a building only worth £300,000., together with some twenty thousand pounds of rags and tinsel in the tiring rooms, Bluebeard's elephants
, and all that — in comes a note from a scorching author, requiring at his hands two acts and odd scenes of a farce!!
Dear H., remind Drury that I am his well-wisher, and let Scrope Davies be well affected towards me. I look forward to meeting you at Newstead, and renewing our old champagne evenings with all the glee of anticipation. I have written by every opportunity, and expect responses as regular as those of the liturgy, and somewhat longer. As it is impossible for a man in his senses to hope for happy days, let us at least look forward to merry ones, which come nearest to the other in appearance, if not in reality; and in such expectations I remain, etc.
Hobhouse, writing to Byron from Malta, July 31, 1810, says,
"Mrs. Bruce picked out a pretty picture of a woman in a fashionable dress in Ackerman's Repository, and observed it was vastly like Lord Byron. I give you warning of this, for fear you should make another conquest and return to England without a curl upon your head. Surely the ladies copy Delilah when they crop their lovers after this fashion.
This makes me think of my poor Miscellany, which is quite dead, if indeed that can be said to be dead which was never alive; not a soul knows, or knowing will speak of it." Again, July 15, 1811, he writes: "The Miscellany is so damned that my friends make it a point of politeness not to mention it ever to me."'Successful youth! why mourn thy ravish'd hair,
Since each lost lock bespeaks a conquer'd fair,
And young and old conspire to make thee bare?'