Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/135

 was another of the guests, told many stories, and in the evening music joined in the singing of Purcell's "Waters of Babylon." Hobhouse was also of the party, and records that "in conversation Moore beat them out of the field. I saw Scrope was envious." Moore in the subsequent pages of his diary repeats several of the jests of our friend, including some which Hodgson, the provost of Eton, who had been senior boy to Davies and Skinner Matthews in the school, had told him. Davies called some person "who had a habit of puffing out his cheeks when he spoke and was not remarkable for veracity "The Æolian lyre." His epitaph on Lord L. ran: "Here lies L.'s body, from his soul asunder, He once was on the turf and now is under." Davies used to enjoy sailing in a boat called the Swallow, but the waves at last proved too tempestuous for him. He wrote lines on his troubles, two of which were: "If ever in the Swallow I to sea Shall go again, may the sea swallow me." On the whole it must be allowed that Scrope's witticisms, if amusing at the moment, were hardly framed for permanent wear.

After their meeting at the country house of Burdett, then an ardent radical, his two guests, Moore and Davies, became very intimate. Moore dined at Scrope's lodgings (29 Nov. 1818) to meet "gentleman" Jackson the boxer, and in less than a week afterwards breakfasted in his rooms at seven o'clock, when they adjourned "to the fight at Crawley, between Randall and Turner," two forgotten pugilists. Moore went to the opera at Covent Garden and in lady Oxford's box found "a rare set of reformers, Hobhouse, Douglas Kinnaird and Scrope Davies." Davies made a lasting impression on Moore. Some years later, 12