[649] ["Waving myself, let me talk to you of the Prince Regent. He ordered me to be presented to him at a ball; and after some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your immortalities; he preferred you to every other bard past and present.... He spoke alternately of Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both.... [All] this was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe it, and with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to manners certainly superior to those of any living gentleman."—Letter to Sir Walter Scott, July 6, 1812, Letters, 1898, ii. 134.]
[650] {479}B. 10bre 7th 1822.—[MS.]
A sculptor projected to hew Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander, with a city in one hand, and, I believe, a river in his pocket, with various other similar devices. But Alexander's gone, and Athos remains, I trust ere long to look over a nation of freemen.
[It was an architect named Stasicrates who proposed to execute this imperial monument. But Alexander bade him leave Mount Athos alone. As it was, it might be christened "Xerxes, his Folly," and, for his part, he preferred to regard Mount Caucasus, and the Himalayas, and the river Don as the symbolic memorials of his acts and deeds.—Plutarch's Moralia. "De Alexandri Fortuna et Virtute," Orat. II. cap. ii.]
[651] {480}[The "Political Economy" Club was founded in April, 1821. James Mill, Thomas Tooke, and David Ricardo were among the original members, See Political Economy Club, Revised Report, 1876, p. 60.]
[652] [Stanzas lxxxviii. and lxxxix. are not in the MS.]