[693] [George Hardinge (1744-1816), who was returned M.P. for Old Sarum in 1784, was appointed, in 1787, Senior Justice of the Counties of Brecon, Glamorgan, and Radnor. According to the Gentleman's Magazine, 1816 (vol. lxxxvi. p. 563), "In conversation he had few equals.... He delighted in pleasantries, and always afforded to his auditors abundance of mirth and entertainment as well as information." Byron seems to have supposed that these "pleasantries" found their way into his addresses to condemned prisoners, but if the charges printed in his Miscellaneous Works, edited by John Nichols in 1818, are reported in full, he was entirely mistaken. They are tedious, but the "waggery" is conspicuous by its absence.]
[MQ] {509}With all his laurels growing upon one tree.—[MS. erased.]
[694] [John Philpot Curran (1750-1817). "Did you know Curran?" asked Byron of Lady Blessington (Conversations, 1834, p. 176); "he was the most wonderful person I ever saw. In him was combined an imagination the most brilliant and profound, with a flexibility and wit that would have justified the observation applied to——that his heart was in his head." (See, too, Detached Thoughts, No. 24, Letters, 1901, v. 421.)]
[695] [For Thomas Lord Erskine (1750-1823), see Letters, 1898, ii. 390, note 5. See, too, Detached Thoughts, No. 93, Letters, 1901, v. 455, 456. In his Spirit of the Age, 1825, pp. 297, 298, Hazlitt contrasts "the impassioned appeals and flashes of wit of a Curran ... the golden tide of wisdom, eloquence, and fancy of a Burke," with the "dashing and graceful manner" which concealed the poverty and "deadness" of the matter of Erskine's speeches.]
[MR] {510}
—— all classes mostly pull
At the same oar——.—[MS. erased.]
[696] {511}["Mrs. Adams answered Mr. Adams, that it was blasphemous to talk of Scripture out of church." This dogma was broached to her husband—the best Christian in any book.—See The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, Bk. IV. chap. xi. ed. 1876, p. 324.]
[MS] —— in the ripe age.—[MS.]
[697] [Probably Richard Sharp (1759-1835), known as "Conversation Sharp." Byron frequently met him in society in 1813-14, and in "Extracts from a Diary," January 9, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 161, describes him as "the Conversationist." He visited Byron at the Villa Diodati in the autumn of 1816 (Life, p. 323).]