hat time in the
hey-day of my worldly prosperity. This offer, however, he declined
with firmness and dignity, though not unkindly. And I now mention it,
because I have seen him charged in print with a selfish regard to his
own pecuniary interest. On the contrary, he appeared to me a very
liberal and generous man; and I well remember that, whilst he refused
to accept of anything from me, he compelled me to receive as presents
all the books which he published during my acquaintance with him; two
of these, corrected with his own hand, viz. the _Lyre of Apollo_ and
the _Sophiometer_, I have lately found amongst other books left in
London; and others he forwarded to me in Westmoreland. In 1809 I saw
him often; in the Spring of that year, I happened to be in London; and
Mr. Wordsworth's tract on the Convention of Cintra being at that time
in the printer's hands, I superintended the publication of it; and, at
Mr. Wordsworth's request, I added a long note on Spanish affairs which
is printed in the Appendix. The opinions I expressed in this note on
the Spanish character at that time much calumniated, on the retreat to
Corunna then fresh in the public mind, above all, the contempt I
expressed for the superstition in respect to the French military
prowess which was then universal and at its height, and which gave way
in fact only to the campaigns of 1814 and 1815, fell in, as it
happened, with Mr. Stewart's political creed in those points where at
that time it met with most opposition. In 1812 it was I think that I
saw him for the last time; and by the way, on the day of my parting
with him, had an amusing proof in my own experience of that sort of
ubiquity ascribed to him by a witty writer in the London Magazine: I
met him and shook hands with him under Somerset-house, telling him
that I should leave town that evening for Westmoreland. Thence I went
by the very shortest road (_i.e._ through Moor-street, Soho--for I am
learned in many quarters of London) towards a point which necessarily
led me through Tottenham-court-road; I stopped nowhere, and walked
fast; yet so it was that in Tottenham-court-road I was not overtaken
by (_that_ was comprehensible), but overtook Walking Stewart.
Certainly, as the above writer alleges, there must have been three
Walking Stewarts in London. He seemed no ways surprised at this
himself, but explained to me that somewhere or other in the
neighbourhood of Tottenham-court-road there was a little theatr