[15] In many instances the mothers of illustrious poets have had reason to be proud no less of the affection than of the glory of their sons; and Tasso, Pope, Gray, and Cowper, are among these memorable examples of filial tenderness. In the lesser poems of Tasso, there are few things so beautiful as his description, in the Canzone to the Metauro, of his first parting with his mother:—
"Me dal sen della madre empia fortuna
Pargoletto divelse," &c.
[16] Napoleon.
[17] In a letter, written between two and three months after his mother's death, he states no less a number than six persons, all friends or relatives, who had been snatched away from him by death between May and the end of August.
[18] In continuation of the note quoted in the text, he says of Matthews—"His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired." One of the candidates, thus described, was Mr. Thomas Barnes, a gentleman whose career since has kept fully the promise of his youth, though, from the nature of the channels through which his literary labours have been directed, his great talents are far more extensively known than his name.
[19] It had been the intention of Mr. Matthews to offer himself, at the ensuing election, for the university. In reference to this purpose, a manuscript Memoir of him, now lying before me, says—"If acknowledged and successful talents—if principles of the strictest honour—if the devotion of many friends could have secured the success of an 'independent pauper' (as he jocularly called himself in a letter on the subject), the vision would have been realised."
[20] He was the third son of the late John Matthews, Esq. of Belmont, Herefordshire, representative of that county in the parliament of 1802-6. The author of "The Diary of an Invalid," also untimely snatched away, was another son of the same gentleman, as is likewise the present Prebendary of Hereford, the Reverend Arthur Matthews, who, by his ability and attainments, sustains worthily the reputation of the name.
The father of this accomplished family was himself a man of considerable talent, and the author of several unavowed poetical pieces; one of which, a Parody of Pope's Eloisa, written in early youth, has been erroneously ascribed to the late Professor Porson, who was in the habit of reciting it, and even printed an edition of the verses.
[21] "One of the cleverest men I ever knew, in conversation, was Scrope Berdmore Davies. Hobhouse is also very good in that line, though it is of less consequence to a man who has other ways of showing his talents than in company. Scrope was always ready and often witty—Hobhouse as witty, but not always so ready, being more diffident."—MS. Journal of Lord Byron.
[22] "If the papers lie not (which they generally do), Demetrius Zograffo of Athens is at the head of the Athenian part of the Greek insurrection. He was my servant in 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812, at different intervals of those years (for I left him in Greece when I went to Constantinople), and accompanied me to England in 1811: he returned to Greece, spring, 1812. He was a clever, but not apparently an enterprising man; but circumstances make men. His two sons (then infants) were named Miltiades and Alcibiades: may the omen be happy!" —MS. Journal.