as in the evening.  We came back to the dining-room.  Our breakfast party consisted of my Lord and Lady, myself, Lord Russell, and Luttrell.  You must have heard of Luttrell.  I met him once at Rogers’s; and I have seen him, I think, in other places.  He is a famous wit,—­the most popular, I think, of all the professed wits,—­a man who has lived in the highest circles, a scholar, and no contemptible poet.  He wrote a little volume of verse entitled “Advice to Julia,”—­not first rate, but neat, lively, piquant, and showing the most consummate knowledge of fashionable life.

We breakfasted on very good coffee, and very good tea, and very good eggs, butter kept in the midst of ice, and hot rolls.  Lady Holland told us her dreams; how she had dreamed that a mad dog bit her foot, and how she set off to Brodie, and lost her way in St. Martin’s Lane, and could not find him.  She hoped, she said, the dream would not come true.  I said that I had had a dream which admitted of no such hope; for I had dreamed that I heard Pollock speak in the House of Commons, that the speech was very long, and that he was coughed down.  This dream of mine diverted them much.

After breakfast Lady Holland offered to conduct me to her own drawing-room, or, rather, commanded my attendance.  A very beautiful room it is, opening on a terrace, and wainscoted with miniature paintings interesting from their merit, and interesting from their history.  Among them I remarked a great many,—­thirty, I should think,—­which even I, who am no great connoisseur, saw at once could come from no hand but Stothard’s.  They were all on subjects from Lord Byron’s poems.  “Yes,” said she; “poor Lord Byron sent them to me a short time before the separation.  I sent them back, and told him that, if he gave them away, he ought to give them to Lady Byron.  But he said that he would not, and that if I did not take them, the bailiffs would, and that they would be lost in the wreck.”  Her ladyship then honoured me so far as to conduct me through her dressing-room into the great family bedchamber to show me a very fine picture by Reynolds of Fox, when a boy, birds-nesting.  She then consigned me to Luttrell, asking him to show me the grounds.

Through the grounds we went, and very pretty I thought them.  In the Dutch garden is a fine bronze bust of Napoleon, which Lord Holland put up in 1817, while Napoleon was a prisoner at St. Helena.  The inscription was selected by his lordship, and is remarkably happy.  It is from Homer’s Odyssey.  I will translate it, as well as I can extempore, into a measure which gives a better idea of Homer’s manner than Pope’s singsong couplet.

 For not, be sure, within the grave
 Is hid that prince, the wise, the brave;
 But in an islet’s narrow bound,
 With the great Ocean roaring round,
 The captive of a foeman base
 He pines to view his native place.

There is a seat near the spot which is called Rogers’s seat.  The poet loves, it seems, to sit there.  A very elegant inscription by Lord Holland is placed over it.