“Matthews and myself had travelled down from London together, talking all the way incessantly upon one single topic.  When we got to Loughborough, I know not what chasm had made us diverge for a moment to some other subject, at which he was indignant.  ‘Come,’ said he, ’don’t let us break through—­let us go on as we began, to our journey’s end;’ and so he continued, and was as entertaining as ever to the very end.  He had previously occupied, during my year’s absence from Cambridge, my rooms in Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones, the tutor, in his odd way, had said, on putting him in, ’Mr. Matthews, I recommend to your attention not to damage any of the movables, for Lord Byron, Sir, is a young man of tumultuous passions.’  Matthews was delighted with this; and whenever anybody came to visit him, begged them to handle the very door with caution; and used to repeat Jones’s admonition in his tone and manner.  There was a large mirror in the room, on which he remarked, ’that he thought his friends were grown uncommonly assiduous in coming to see him, but he soon discovered that they only came to see themselves.’  Jones’s phrase of ‘tumultuous passions,’ and the whole scene, had put him into such good humour, that I verily believe that I owed to it a portion of his good graces.

“When at Newstead, somebody by accident rubbed against one of his white silk stockings, one day before dinner; of course the gentleman apologised.  ‘Sir,’ answered Matthews, ’it may be all very well for you, who have a great many silk stockings, to dirty other people’s; but to me, who have only this one pair, which I have put on in honour of the Abbot here, no apology can compensate for such carelessness; besides, the expense of washing.’  He had the same sort of droll sardonic way about every thing.  A wild Irishman, named F——­, one evening beginning to say something at a large supper at Cambridge, Matthews roared out ‘Silence!’ and then, pointing to F——­, cried out, in the words of the oracle, ‘Orson is endowed with reason.’  You may easily suppose that Orson lost what reason he had acquired, on hearing this compliment.  When H——­ published his volume of poems, the Miscellany (which Matthews would call the ’Miss-sell-any’), all that could be drawn from him was, that the preface was ’extremely like Walsh.’  H——­ thought this at first a compliment; but we never could make out what it was,[82] for all we know of Walsh is his Ode to King William, and Pope’s epithet of ‘knowing Walsh.’  When the Newstead party broke up for London, H——­ and Matthews, who were the greatest friends possible, agreed, for a whim, to walk together to town.  They quarrelled by the way, and actually walked the latter half of their journey, occasionally passing and repassing, without speaking.  When Matthews had got to Highgate, he had spent all his money but three-pence halfpenny, and determined to spend that also in a pint of beer, which I believe he was drinking before a public-house, as H——­ passed him (still without speaking) for the last time on their route.  They were reconciled in London again.