[Footnote 115:  “It was bitterness that they mistook for frolic.”—­Johnson’s account of himself at the university, in Boswell.]

[Footnote 116:  The poet Cowper, it is well known, produced that masterpiece of humour, John Gilpin, during one of his fits of morbid dejection; and he himself says, “Strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood, and but for that saddest mood, perhaps, had never been written at all.”]

[Footnote 117:  The reconciliation which took place between him and Dr. Butler, before his departure, is one of those instances of placability and pliableness with which his life abounded.  We have seen, too, from the manner in which he mentions the circumstance in one of his note-books, that the reconcilement was of that generously retrospective kind, in which not only the feeling of hostility is renounced in future, but a strong regret expressed that it had been ever entertained.

Not content with this private atonement to Dr. Butler, it was his intention, had he published another edition of the Hours of Idleness, to substitute for the offensive verses against that gentleman, a frank avowal of the wrong he had been guilty of in giving vent to them.  This fact, so creditable to the candour of his nature, I learn from a loose sheet in his handwriting, containing the following corrections.  In place of the passage beginning “Or if my Muse a pedant’s portrait drew,” he meant to insert—­

    “If once my Muse a harsher portrait drew,
    Warm with her wrongs, and deem’d the likeness true,
    By cooler judgment taught, her fault she owns,—­
    With noble minds a fault, confess’d, atones.”

And to the passage immediately succeeding his warm praise of Dr. Drury—­“Pomposus fills his magisterial chair,” it was his intention to give the following turn:—­

    “Another fills his magisterial chair;
    Reluctant Ida owns a stranger’s care;
    Oh may like honours crown his future name,—­
    If such his virtues, such shall be his fame.”
]

[Footnote 118:  Lord Byron used sometimes to mention a strange story, which the commander of the packet, Captain Kidd, related to him on the passage.  This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his limbs, and, there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he thought, distinctly, the figure of his brother, who was at that time in the naval service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform, and stretched across the bed.  Concluding it to be an illusion of the senses, he shut his eyes and made an effort to sleep.  But still the same pressure continued, and still, as often as he ventured to take another look, he saw the figure lying across him in the same position.  To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to touch this form, he found the uniform, in which it appeared to be dressed, dripping wet.  On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished; but in a few months after he received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had been drowned in the Indian seas.  Of the supernatural character of this appearance, Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have the slightest doubt.]