Edward FitzGerald, ‘Memoir of Bernard Barton’

Quoting Barton on his childhood memories.

My most delightful recollections of boyhood are connected with the fine old country-house in a green lane diverging from the high road which runs through Tottenham. I would give seven years of life as it now is, for a week of that which I then led. It was a large old house, with an iron palisade and a pair of iron gates in front, and a huge stone eagle on each pier. Leading up to the steps by which you went up to the hall door, was a wide gravel walk, bordered in summer time by huge tubs, in which were orange and lemon trees, and in the centre of the grass-plot stood a tub yet huger, holding an enormous aloe. The hall itself, to my fancy then lofty and wide as a cathedral would seem now, was a famous place for battledore and shuttlecock; and behind was a garden, equal to that of old Alcinous himself. My favourite walk was one of turf by a long strait pond, bordered with lime-trees. But the whole demesne was the fairy ground of my childhood; and its presiding genius was grandpapa.

Lord Byron, Letter to Bernard Barton, 1 June 1812

On Barton's early work.

Some weeks ago my friend Mr. Rogers showed me some of the Stanzas in MS., and I then expressed my opinion of their merit, which a further perusal of the printed volume has given me no reason to revoke. I mention this as it may not be disagreeable to you to learn that I entertained a very favourable opinion of your power before I was aware that such sentiments were reciprocal.

B.B. [Bernard Barton?], ‘The Friends: To the Editor of the Examiner’

A response to William Hazlitt's account of Quaker culture.

I can assure W.H. that he is altogether mistaken in us; that we are not the automatons he takes us for; and that if he will but take the trouble of becoming better acquainted with us, he will find, notwithstanding the demureness of our drab, and the amplitude of our beaver, we have an intimate “consciousness of human follies, human pursuits, and human pleasures”;