George Borrow

“ He was a lordling, a glittering, gorgeous lordling: and he might have had a consciousness that he owed much of his celebrity to being so; he might have felt that he was rather at the top of fashion than of fame. Fashion soon changes, thought I, eagerly to myself—a time will come, and that speedily, when he will be no longer in the fashion; when this idiotic admirer of his, who is still grinning at my side, shall have ceased to mould his style on Byron's ”

“ Hurrying down a street to the right, I encountered Francis Ardry.
'What means the multitude yonder?' he demanded.
'They are looking after the hearse which is carrying the remains of Byron up Tottenham Road.'
'I have seen the man,' said my friend, as he turned back the way he had come, 'so I can dispense with seeing the hearse—I saw the living man at Venice—ah, a great poet.'
'Yes,' said I, 'a great poet, it must be so, everybody says so—what a destiny! What a difference in the fate of men ”

“ Now, however fond the public might be of fairy tales, it by no means relished them in conjunction with the publisher's philosophy; and however fond of anecdotes in general, or even of the publisher in particular—for indeed there were a great many anecdotes in circulation about him which the public both read and listened to very readily—it took no pleasure in such anecdotes as he was disposed to relate about himself. In the compilation of my Lives and Trials I was exposed to incredible mortification, and ceaseless trouble, from this same rage for interference. ”