" By this time
the lectures had become fashionable. One eye-witness writes:--
"All Albemarle Street, and a part of Grafton Street, was rendered
impassable by the concourse of carriages assembled there during the
time of their delivery. There was not sufficient room for the persons
assembling; the lobbies were filled, and the doors into them from the
lecture-room were left open."
Horner reckoned "from six to eight hundred hearers and not a seat to be
procured, even if you go there an hour before the time." Sir Robert Peel,
who had just left Harrow, was one of the audience, and remembered the
lectures forty years after their delivery. As late as 1843, Dr. Whewell[29]
inquired if they were still accessible. Sydney Smith, according to Lord
Houghton, described his performances as "the most successful swindle of the
season"; and, writing to Jeffrey in April 1805, he says:--
"My lectures are just now at such an absurd pitch of celebrity, that I
must lose a good deal of reputation before the public settles into a
just equilibrium respecting them. I am most heartily ashamed of my own
fame, because I am conscious I do not deserve it, and that the moment
men of sense are provoked by the clamour to look into my claims, it
will be at an end."
Notwithstanding this premonition, the lecturer adventured on a third
course, which was delivered at the same place in the spring of 1806.
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