Dined with us, being Sunday, Will.  Clerk and Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe.  W.C. is the second son of the celebrated author of Naval Tactics.[1] I have known him intimately since our college days; and, to my thinking, never met a man of greater powers, or more complete information on all desirable subjects.  In youth he had strongly the Edinburgh pruritus disputandi; but habits of society have greatly mellowed it, and though still anxious to gain your suffrage to his views, he endeavours rather to conciliate your opinion than conquer it by force.  Still there is enough of tenacity of sentiment to prevent, in London society, where all must go slack and easy, W.C. from rising to the very top of the tree as a conversation man, who must not only wind the thread of his argument gracefully, but also know when to let go.  But I like the Scotch taste better; there is more matter, more information, above all, more spirit in it.  Clerk will, I am afraid, leave the world little more than the report of his fame.  He is too indolent to finish any considerable work.[2] Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe is another very remarkable man.  He was bred a clergyman, but did not take orders, owing I believe to a peculiar effeminacy of voice which must have been unpleasant in reading prayers.  Some family quarrels occasioned his being indifferently provided for by a small annuity from his elder brother, extorted by an arbitral decree.  He has infinite wit and a great turn for antiquarian lore, as the publications of Kirkton,[3] etc., bear witness.  His drawings are the most fanciful and droll imaginable—­a mixture between Hogarth and some of those foreign masters who painted temptations of St. Anthony, and such grotesque subjects.  As a poet he has not a very strong touch.  Strange that his finger-ends can describe so well what he cannot bring out clearly and firmly in words.  If he were to make drawing a resource, it might raise him a large income.  But though a lover of antiquities, and therefore of expensive trifles, C.K.S. is too aristocratic to use his art to assist his revenue.  He is a very complete genealogist, and has made many detections in Douglas and other books on pedigree, which our nobles would do well to suppress if they had an opportunity.  Strange that a man should be curious after scandal of centuries old!  Not but Charles loves it fresh and fresh also, for, being very much a fashionable man, he is always master of the reigning report, and he tells the anecdote with such gusto that there is no helping sympathising with him—­the peculiarity of voice adding not a little to the general effect.  My idea is that C.K.S., with his oddities, tastes, satire, and high aristocratic feelings, resembles Horace Walpole—­perhaps in his person also, in a general way.—­See Miss Hawkins’ Anecdotes[4] for a description of the author of The Castle of Otranto.