Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/134

 leave of my friend and fellow traveller, with whom I have not had even a bickering upon a six weeks tour. Good fortune attend him!" (lord Broughton, II., 1—12.)

Davies returned to England with the statement that the poet, although gloomy, was in good health and full of spirit; he brought back also some trinkets for Byron's nieces and the fair copy of the third canto of Childe Harold. Whether this copy was ever delivered to John Murray remains a matter of doubt. Byron wrote a letter of enquiry about it in December 1816, in which he dubbed poor Davies a man "of inaccurate memory" and maliciously adds that he "will bountifully bestow extracts and transcriptions on all the curious of his acquaintance." Ultimately this canto was printed from the transcript brought to England by Shelley. Davies became more and more associated in the public mind with the poet's friendship. He gave evidence on 28 November 1816 before the lord chancellor in the case of Byron v. Johnson, when an injunction was obtained to restrain Johnson from publishing a volume with the title of "lord Byron's Childe Harold's pilgrimage to the Holy Land." He was among those consulted on the propriety of publishing Don Juan and he concurred with his associates, Hobhouse, Douglas Kinnaird, Moore and Frere, in recommending that it should be suppressed. Murray advised the author to "wrap up or leave out certain approximations to indelicacy." This reminded Byron of George Lamb's quarrel at Cambridge with Davies. "Sir," said Lamb " he hinted at my illegitimacy." " Yes," said Scrope "I called him a damned adulterous bastard."

Tom Moore chronicles in his diary the doings of many of the fashionable members of the Whig party. He describes a visit which he paid in September 1818 to Ramsbury, the Wiltshire seat of Sir Francis Burdett. Scrope