[547] {417}In the Empress Anne's time, Biren, her favourite, assumed the name and arms of the "Birons" of France; which families are yet extant with that of England. There are still the daughters of Courland of that name; one of them I remember seeing in England in the blessed year of the Allies (1814)—the Duchess of S.—to whom the English Duchess of Somerset presented me as a namesake.
["Ernest John Biren was born in Courland [in 1690]. His grandfather had been head groom to James, the third Duke of Courland, and obtained from his master the present of a small estate in land.... In 1714 he made his appearance at St. Petersburg, and solicited the place of page to the Princess Charlotte, wife of the Tzarovitch Alexey; but being contemptuously rejected as a person of mean extraction, retired to Mittau, where he chanced to ingratiate himself with Count Bestuchef, Master of the Household to Anne, widow of Frederic William, Duke of Courland, who resided at Mittau. Being of a handsome figure and polite address, he soon gained the good will of the duchess, and became her secretary and chief favourite. On her being declared sovereign of Russia, Anne called Biren to Petersburg, and the secretary soon became Duke of Courland, and first minister or rather despot of Russia. On the death of Anne, which happened in 1740, Biren, being declared regent, continued daily increasing his vexations and cruelties, till he was arrested, on the 18th of December, only twenty days after he had been appointed to the regency; and at the revolution that ensued he was exiled to the frozen shores of the Oby." Catherine II., by W. Tooke, 1800, i. 160, footnote. He was recalled in 1763, and died in 1772.
In a letter to his sister, dated June 18, 1814, Byron gives a slightly different version of the incident, recorded in his note (vide supra): "The Duchess of Somerset also, to mend matters, insisted on presenting me to a Princess Biron, Duchess of Hohen-God-knows-what, and another person to her two sisters, Birons too. But I flew off, and would not, saying I had had enough of introductions for that night at least."—Letters, 1899, iii. 98. The "daughters of Courland" must have been descendants of "Pierre, dernier Duc de Courlande, De la Maison de Biron," viz. Jeanne Cathérine, born June 24, 1783, who married, in 1801, François Pignatelli de Belmonte, Duc d'Acerenza, and Dorothée, born August 21, 1793, who married, in 1809, Edmond de Talleyrand Périgord, Duc de Talleyrand, nephew to the Bishop of Autun. (See Almanach de Gotha, 1848, pp. 109, 110.)]
[548] {418}[Napoleon's exclamation at the Elysée Bourbon, June 23, 1815. "When his civil counsellors talked of defence, the word wrung from him the bitter ejaculation, 'Ah! my old guard! could they but defend themselves like you!'"—Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, by Sir Walter Scott, Prose Works, 1846, ii. 760.]
Who now that he is dead has not a foe;
The last expired in cut-throat Castlereagh.—[MS. erased.]
[549] [Immanuel Kant, born at Königsberg, in 1729, became Professor and Rector of the University, and died at Königsberg in 1804.]
[550] {419}
["The castled crag of Drachenfels