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In the year 1836 Grantley made his first appearance 

 in a new character, that of author. One of the most 

 amusing features of his egoism was his supreme belief 

 in his own literary gifts. In his " Recollections" he has 

 no hesitation in comparing himself with Byron, whose 

 early career, he fancied, bore a resemblance to his own, 

 and whose poems, he thought, expressed emotions similar 

 to those which had given birth to his own excursions 

 into verse ! But his first published venture was in prose, 

 a three-volume romance entitled " Berkeley Castle," and 

 it brought him a notoriety for which its literary merits 

 (if it can by any stretch of courtesy be said to possess 

 any) were certainly not responsible. 



According to Berkeley's account, which no one, I 

 imagine, accepts as absolutely trustworthy, the ill-fated 

 poetess Letitia Elizabeth Landon, better known by her 

 initials, "L.E.L.," made him her confidant in a very 

 delicate matter, and implored him to rescue her from the 

 hands of an unscrupulous libertine into whose power she 

 had fallen. This person proved to be Dr. William 

 Maginn, a brilliant man of letters of whom Thackeray 

 has given a kindly portrait in Captain Shandon. 

 Maginn was without doubt a shiftless, dissipated creature, 

 but that he was the unspeakable blackguard that 

 Grantley Berkeley declares him to have been I do not 

 for a moment believe. From the base designs of this 

 " infamous villain " the chivalrous Grantley represents 

 himself as having rescued " L.E.L." But Maginn, " the 

 thwarted seducer," soon had his revenge. When 

 " Berkeley Castle : A Romance " appeared it was most 

 savagely slated in Eraser's Magazine, of which Maginn 



