Page:Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824).djvu/207

 self. I myself never knew a man, except Shelley, who was companionable till thirty. I remember Mrs. Pope once asking who was Lewis’s male-love this season! He possessed a very lively imagination, and a great turn for narrative, and had a world of ghost-stories, which he had better have confined himself to telling. His poetry is now almost forgotten: it will be the same with that of all but two or three poets of the day.

“Lewis had been, or thought he had been, unkind to a brother whom he lost young; and when any thing disagreeable was about to happen to him, the vision of his brother appeared: he came as a sort of monitor.

“Lewis was with me for a considerable period at Geneva; and we went to Coppet several times together; but Lewis was there oftener than I.

“Madame de Staël and he used to have violent arguments about the Slave Trade,—which he advocated strongly, for most of his property was in negroes and plantations. Not being satisfied with three thousand