as to be delightful. They were soon, as they turned the
pages, held in throes of laughter, laughter that was but intensified
by the endeavours of their correct and nettled host to point out the
genuine merits of his friend's work. And then suddenly--oh joy!--'we
lighted,' Moore records, 'on the discovery that our host, in addition
to his sincere approbation of some of this book's contents, had also the
motive of gratitude for standing by its author, as one of the poems was
a warm and, I need not add, well-deserved panegyric on himself. We were,
however'--the narrative has an added charm from Tom Moore's demure care
not to offend or compromise the still-surviving Rogers--'too far gone in
nonsense for even this eulogy, in which we both so heartily agreed, to
stop us. The opening line of the poem was, as well as I can recollect,
"When Rogers o'er this labour bent;" and Lord Byron undertook to read
it aloud;--but he found it impossible to get beyond the first two
words. Our laughter had now increased to such a pitch that nothing could
restrain it. Two or three times he began; but no sooner had the words
"When Rogers" passed his lips, than our fit burst out afresh,--till
even Mr. Rogers himself, with all his feeling of our injustice, found
it impossible not to join us; and we were, at last, all three in such a
state of inextinguishable laughter, that, had the author himself been
of our party, I question much whether he could have resisted the
infection.' The final fall and dissolution of Rogers, Rogers behaving
as badly as either of them, is all that was needed to give perfection
to this heart-warming scene. I like to think that on a certain night
in spring, year after year, three ghosts revisit that old room and
(without, I hope, inconvenience to Lord Northcliffe, who may happen
to be there) sit rocking and writhing in the grip of that old shared
rapture. Uncanny? Well, not more so than would have seemed to Byron and
Moore and Rogers the notion that more than a hundred years away from
them was some one joining in their laughter--as I do.

Alas, I cannot join in it more than gently. To imagine a scene, however
vividly, does not give us the sense of being, or even of having been,
present at it. Indeed, the greater the glow of the scene reflected, the
sharper is the pang of our realisation that we were not there, and of
our annoyance that we weren't. Such a pang comes to me with special
force whenever my fancy posts itself outs