As soon as Byron came to town, he was a frequent visitor at 32, Fleet Street, while the sheets of
Childe Harold
were passing through the press.
"Fresh from the fencing rooms of Angelo and Jackson, he used to amuse himself by renewing his practice of Carte et Tierce, with his walking-cane directed against the bookshelves, while Murray was reading passages from the poem with occasional ejaculations of admiration, on which Byron would say, 'You think that a good idea, do you, Murray?' Then he would fence and lunge with his walking-stick at some special book which he had picked out on the shelves before him. As Murray afterwards said, 'I was often very glad to get rid of him!'"
(Smiles's
Memoir of John Murray
, vol. i. p. 207).