Traveller and virtuoso, author of "Anastasius, or the Memoirs of a Modern Greek," which Byron was proud to have fathered on him, and of a posthumous essay on the "Origin and Prospects of Man," was famous as having suggested to Carlyle one of the most significant things he ever wrote, while he pronounced it perhaps the absurdest book written in our century by a thinking man. See Carlyle's Miscellaneous Essay "Characteristics."