Lord Byron, in a conversation with the Countess of Blessington, said that he wept bitterly over many pages of Anastasius, and for two reasons: first, that he had not written it; and secondly, that Hope had; for it was necessary to like a man excessively to pardon his writing such a book; as, he said, excelling all recent productions, as much in wit and talent as in true pathos. Lord Byron added, that he would have given his two most approved poems to have been the author of Anastasius.
SMART REPARTEE.
Walpole relates, after an execution of eighteen malefactors, a woman was hawking an account of them, but called them nineteen. A gentleman said to her, “Why do you say nineteen? there were but eighteen hanged.” She replied, “Sir, I did not know you had been reprieved.”
COLTON’S “LACON.”
This remarkable book was written upon covers of letters and scraps of paper of such description as was nearest at hand; the greater part at a house in Princes-street, Soho. Colton’s lodging was a penuriously-furnished second-floor, and upon a rough deal table, with a stumpy pen, our author wrote.
Though a beneficed clergyman, holding the vicarage of Kew, with Petersham, in Surrey, Colton was a well-known frequenter of the gaming-table; and, suddenly disappearing from his usual haunts in London about the time of the murder of Weare, in 1823, it was strongly suspected he had been assassinated. It was, however, afterwards ascertained that he had absconded to avoid his creditors; and in 1828 a successor was appointed to his living. He then went to reside in America, but subsequently lived in Paris, a professed gamester; and it is said that he thus gained, in two years only, the sum of 25,000l. He blew out his brains while on a visit to a friend at Fontainebleau, in 1832; bankrupt in health, spirits, and fortune.