library to procure this fascinating work, that it will not yield up its charm—a charm there certainly is—without a certain amount of perseverance. A good deal of it is a skeleton diary mere statements of small facts, which, if interesting at all, are interesting only when you have enabled yourself to read a good deal between the actually written lines—and, moreover, Byrom is apt to be t ntalising, and to confine himself to brief notes just where we should be glad of a little more expansion. He meets Laurence Sterne, for example, and repeats not a word of his talk. After making this reservation, I can fully agree with Dr. Ward, that it is impossible to read through the book without deriving a charming impression of Byrom himself, and of the circle in which he especially delighted.
And now I will try to answer briefly the question from which I started. Who was Byrom? Byrom was the descendant of an old family long settled near Manchester. The Byroms of Byrom had dwindled down till they were represented by one Beau Byrom, who, in the time of his cousin, was consuming the last fragments of the ancestral estates, was subsiding into a debtor's prison, and was not above accepting a half-crown
