'"
The unconcern with which he could sometimes allude to the defect in
his foot is manifest from another passage in one of these letters to
Mr. Hodgson. That gentleman having said jestingly that some of the
verses in the "Hours of Idleness" were calculated to make schoolboys
rebellious, Lord Byron answers--"If my songs have produced the
glorious effects you mention, I shall be a complete Tyrtaeus;--though
I am sorry to say I resemble that interesting harper more in his
person than in his poesy." Sometimes, too, even an allusion to this
infirmity by others, when he could perceive that it was not
offensively intended, was borne by him with the most perfect good
humour. "I was once present," says the friend I have just mentioned,
"in a large and mixed company, when a vulgar person asked him
aloud--'Pray, my Lord, how is that foot of yours?'--'Thank you, sir,'
answered Lord Byron, with the utmost mildness--'much the same as
usual.'"
The following extract, relating to a reverend friend of his Lordship,
is from another of his letters to Mr. Hodgson, this year:--
"A few weeks ago I wrote to ----, to request he would receive the son
of a citizen of London, well known to me, as a pupil; the family
having been particularly polite during the short time I was with them
induced me to this application. Now, mark what follows, as somebody
sublimely saith. On this day arrives an epistle signed ----,
containing not the smallest reference to tuition or _in_tuition, but a
_pe_tition for Robert Gregson, of pugilistic notoriety, now in bondage
for certain paltry pounds sterling, and liable to take up his
everlasting abode in Banco Regis.
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