I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with Rogers.  He was telling me of the curiosity and interest which attached to the persons of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron.  When Sir Walter Scott dined at a gentleman’s in London some time ago, all the servant-maids in the house asked leave to stand in the passage and see him pass.  He was, as you may conceive, greatly flattered.  About Lord Byron, whom he knew well, he told me some curious anecdotes.  When Lord Byron passed through Florence, Rogers was there.  They had a good deal of conversation, and Rogers accompanied him to his carriage.  The inn had fifty windows in front.  All the windows were crowded with women, mostly English women, to catch a glance at their favourite poet.  Among them were some at whose houses he had often been in England, and with whom he had lived on friendly terms.  He would not notice them, or return their salutations.  Rogers was the only person that he spoke to.

The worst thing that I know about Lord Byron is the very unfavourable impression which he made on men, who certainly were not inclined to judge him harshly, and who, as far as I know, were never personally ill-used by him.  Sharp and Rogers both speak of him as an unpleasant, affected, splenetic person.  I have heard hundreds and thousands of people who never saw him rant about him; but I never heard a single expression of fondness for him fall from the lips of any of those who knew him well.  Yet, even now, after the lapse of five-and-twenty years, there are those who cannot talk for a quarter of an hour about Charles Fox without tears.

Sydney Smith leaves London on the 20th, the day before Parliament meets for business.  I advised him to stay, and see something of his friends who would be crowding to London.  “My flock!” said this good shepherd.  “My dear Sir, remember my flock!  The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.”

I could say nothing to such an argument; but I could not help thinking that, if Mr. Daniel Wilson had said such a thing, it would infallibly have appeared in his funeral sermon, and in his Life by Baptist Noel.  But in poor Sydney’s mouth it sounded like a joke.  He begged me to come and see him at Combe Florey.  “There I am, Sir, the priest of the Flowery Valley, in a delightful parsonage, about which I care a good deal, and a delightful country, about which I do not care a straw.”  I told him that my meeting him was some compensation for missing Ramohun Roy.  Sydney broke forth: 

“Compensation!  Do you mean to insult me?  A beneficed clergyman, an orthodox clergyman, a nobleman’s chaplain, to be no more than compensation for a Brahmin; and a heretic Brahmin too, a fellow who has lost his own religion and can’t find another; a vile heterodox dog, who, as I am credibly informed eats beef-steaks in private!  A man who has lost his caste! who ought to have melted lead poured down his nostrils, if the good old Vedas were in force as they ought to be.”