country. 'Nay,' he observes, when some one sends him a hare,
Nay, should one reflect upon cruelty's course,
In the gentlemen butchers, the Hunt, and the Course,
'Twere enough to prevent either pudding or jelly
From storing such carcass within a man's belly!
Here and there he has an adventure. He has a gift for falling in with the most deserving beggars, poor soldiers who have been 'in slavery' somewhere, and the like, and gives them money and letters to his friends. Once, in Epping Forest, on the way to Cambridge, he has the proper meeting with a highwayman. Of course, he takes it good-humouredly, as an excellent pretext for a copy of verses. The highwayman's bad language runs spontaneously into rhyme; and in proper epical style the ruffian is put to flight by the mock-heroic vision of the 'Goddess Shorthand, bright, celestial maid'! In sober prose, the highwayman goes off with a guinea of Byrom's, and Byrom expects to see him again in the neighbourhood of Tyburn. Byrom, however, is really happy when he is in the full stream of society. One of his friends describes a typical London day from imagination, which, as the diary shows, is very nearly correct. He generally gets up late, we are sorry to observe,
