POETRY AND POETS. 



133 



cient religious houses. As she 

 walked along one side of this court, 

 she passed a man whose back was 

 towards her a bulky-looking per- 

 son, slightly paralytic, and who 

 shuffled in walking as if from 

 lameness. As she approached the 

 door, she heard this man pronounce 

 her name. "Jean," he said, and 

 then immediately added, as under a 

 more formal feeling, " Mrs. Whelp- 

 dale!" It was her husband the 

 gay youth of 1793 being now trans- 

 formed into a broken-down middle- 

 agrd man, whom she had passed 

 without even suspecting who he 

 was. The wife had to ask the 

 if he was her husband, and 

 :ure answered that he was. 

 To such a scene many a romantic 

 iHnrriage leads ! There was kind- 

 ness, nevertheless, between the long- 

 sojnrated pair. Jean spent a month 

 in Carlisle, calling upon her husband 



every day, and then returned to 

 Scotland. Some months after- 

 wards, when he had been libe- 

 rated, she paid him another visit ; 

 but his litter inability to make a 

 prudent use of any money intrusted 

 to him, rendered it quite impossible 

 that they should ever renew their 

 conjugal life. After this she never 

 saw him again. It is understood 

 that this poor, unprotected woman 

 at length was led into an error 

 which cost her the respect of so- 

 ciety. She spent some time in a 

 kind of vagrant life, verging on 

 mendicancy, and never rising above 

 the condition of a domestic servant. 

 She never ceased to be elegant in 

 her form and comely of face ; nor 

 did she ever cease to recollect that 

 she had been the subject of some 

 dozen compositions by one of the 

 greatest modern masters of the 

 lyre. (Chambers's Life of Burns.) 



POETRY AND POETS, 



LORD BYRON AND MR. CURRAN. 



When Lord Byron rose into fame, 

 Curran constantly objected to his 

 talking of himself,as thegreat draw- 

 back on his poetry. " Any subject," 

 said he, " but that eternal one 

 of self. I am weary of knowing 

 once a month the state of any man's 

 hopes or fears, rights or wrongs. 

 1 should as soon read a register of 

 the weather, the barometer up so 

 111:1 ny inches to-day and down so 

 many inches to-morrow. I feel 

 scepticism all over me at the sight 

 of agonies on paper, things that 

 come as regular and as notorious as 

 the full of the moon. The truth is, 

 his lordship weeps for the press, and 

 'wipes his eyes with the public? 



POETS AT BREAKFAST. 



The following specimen of the 

 table-talk of poets is taken from 



''Moore's Diary." The entry is 

 dated October 27, 1820 : 



" Wordsworth came at half-past 

 eight, and stopped to breakfast. 

 Talked a good deal. Spoke of 

 Byron's plagiarisms from him ; the 

 whole third canto of Cliilde Ha- 

 rold founded on his style and sen- 

 timents. The feeling of natural 

 objects which is there expressed, 

 not caught by B. from nature her- 

 self, but from him (Wordsworth), 

 and spoiled in the transmission. 

 T intern Abbey, the source of it all ; 

 from which same poem,too, the cele- 

 brated passage about Solitude, in 

 the first canto of Cliilde Harold 

 is (he said) taken, with this differ- 

 ence, that what is naturally ex> 

 pressed by him, lias been worked 

 by Byron into a laboured and anti- 

 thetical sort of declamation. Spoke 

 of the Scottish Novels. Is sure 

 they are Scott's. The only doubt 



