Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/126

 not expect the death of Matthews to come home to a man of that temperament so keenly as it did to Hobhouse. But Davies was a true friend to Byron at all events, and did not shrink from telling the poet to his face of the faults which beset him and especially of his craze for desiring the world to invest him with a reputation for lunacy. When Byron's reckless speculations in thought used, as he himself expressed it, to suffer from "a confusion of ideas" and when with his wonted vehemence of phrase and with the melodramatic manner which captivated the youth of both sexes he would exclaim "I shall go mad," it would be the part of Scrope to pour ridicule on this affectation. Davies possessed a "quaint dry manner of speaking" and was numbered among the wits whose efforts were heightened by the charms of an irresistible stammer. Very quiet and cutting was his comment on Byron's conduct rather silliness than madness.

One or two of Scrope's jests at this period in his life have been preserved for us by his admiring associates. Their sparkle has evaporated. They are as flat as a bottle of Seltzer water the day after the cork has been drawn. Picture to yourselves Byron and Davies sitting at supper at Steevens's after the opera on a night in 1808 with their third bottle of claret before them. There enters young Goulburn, full of the praises of his horse, a forgotten Grimaldi, which had just won a race for him at Newmarket. "Did he win easy?" was the natural but not very inspiriting question of Scrope. "Sir" said Goulburn "he did not even condescend to puff at coming in." "No" said Scrope " and so you puff for him."

The scene of the other witticism is laid at Cambridge. Some amateur theatricals had been arranged and the hour for the play's production had arrived, when one of the performers called Tulk disappointed the company by