"I have brought home some marbles for Hobhouse;--for myself, four ancient Athenian skulls,[141] dug out of sarcophagi--a phial of Attic hemlock[142]--four live tortoises--a greyhound (died on the passage)--two live Greek servants, one an Athenian, t'other a Yaniote, who can speak nothing but Romaic and Italian--and _myself_, as Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield says, slily, and I may say it too, for I have as little cause to boast of my expedition as he had of his to the fair.
"I wrote to you from the Cyanean Rocks to tell you I had swam from Sestos to Abydos--have you received my letter? Hodgson I suppose is four deep by this time. What would he have given to have seen, like me, the _real Parnassus_, where I robbed the Bishop of Chrissæ of a book of geography!--but this I only call plagiarism, as it was done within an hour's ride of Delphi."
[Footnote 1: Published in two volumes, 4to.]
[Footnote 2: It is almost unnecessary to apprise the reader that the paragraph at the bottom of p. 222. vol. iv. was written _before_ the appearance of this extraordinary paper.]
[Footnote 3: From p. 4. to 11. vol. v. inclusive.]
[Footnote 4: In p. 232. vol. iv. however, the reader will find it alluded to, and in terms such as conduct so disinterested deserves.]
[Footnote 6: "In the park of Horseley," says Thoroton, "there was a castle, some of the ruins whereof are yet visible, called Horestan Castle, which was the chief mansion of his (Ralph de Burun's) successors."]
[Footnote 7: The priory of Newstead had been founded and dedicated to God and the Virgin, by Henry II.; and its monks, who were canons regular of the order of St. Augustine, appear to have been peculiarly the objects of royal favour, no less in spiritual than in temporal concerns. During the lifetime of the fifth Lord Byron, there was found in the lake at Newstead,--where it is supposed to have been thrown for concealment by the monks,--a large brass eagle, in the body of which, on its being sent to be cleaned, was discovered a secret aperture, concealing within it a number of old legal papers connected with the rights and privileges of the foundation. At the sale of the old lord's effects in 1776-7, this eagle, together with three candelabra, found at the same time, was purchased by a watch-maker of Nottingham (by whom the concealed manuscripts were discovered), and having from his hands passed into those of Sir Richard Kaye, a prebendary of Southwell, forms at present a very remarkable ornament of the cathedral of that place. A curious document, said to have been among those found in the eagle, is now in the possession of Colonel Wildman, containing a grant of full pardon from Henry V. of every possible crime (and there is a tolerably long catalogue enumerated) which the monks might have committed previous to the 8th of December preceding:--"_Murdris_, per ipsos _post decimum nonum diem Novembris_, ultimo præteritum perpetratis, si quæ fuerint, _exceptis_."]