I have been more than once in company with Washington Irving, a most amiable man and great genius, but not lively in conversation. The engraved portraits I have seen of him are not very like him. He frequented the reading-room of Galignani at Paris, and seemed to have some literary connexions with him. There I saw Captain Medwin, the author of the book called Lord Byron's Conversations, which I believe to have been accurately reported. He was with his friend Grattan, the author of High-ways and Bye-ways. I was not personally acquainted with either of them. Grattan's flat nose is somewhat concealed in the print given of him in Colburn's Magazine, where this author, of course, makes a distinguished figure.
The late Professor Pictet, of Geneva, who had spent some of his early days in England, and was very fond of it, told me some curious anecdotes of his countryman De Lolme, whose book on the English constitution is much more commended than it deserves. He once endeavoured to set up a rival Journal to Old Swinton's Courrier de l'Europe, but his absurd denial of Rodney's victory ruined the project. De Vergennes, the French minister, patronized it. Brissot was connected with Swinton in the above-named Journal. One of Swinton's sons holds a high situation in the British Government in India:another commanded a ship in the Company's service. Old Swinton was a Scotch jacobite, and forfeited.