ABSTRACT
The second poem in S.’s notebook found in 1976 in Byron’s friend Scrope Davies’s deposit-box in Barclay’s Bank, Pall Mall, (see The Times 20 December 1976, 1–2, 5). The notebook had evidently been entrusted to Scrope Davies, together with MSS of Byron, when he returned from Geneva on about 8 September 1816, but he had failed to execute his commissions. S., who left Geneva on 29 August, had either mislaid the notebook or left it behind for Byron to read because his most recent poem, ‘Mont Blanc’, had only just been copied into it. The transcript of ‘To Laughter’ is in Mary S.’s hand. S.’s very lively sense of fun is well attested: Medwin for instance said he had ‘never met with any one in whom the brilliance of wit and humour was more conspicuous. In this respect he fell little short of Byron’ (Athenaeum No. 250, 11 August 1832, 523), and Edward Williams described him as ‘full of life and fun’ (Recollections 12).
