THE BROTHERHOOD 
 
 OF 
 
 LETTERS.
 
 THE BROTHERHOOD 
 
 OF 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 J. ROGERS REES, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 ' THE DIVERSIONS OF A BOOKWORM," " THE PLEASURES OP A 
 BOOKWORM," ETC. 
 
 " Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, 
 
 And did he stop and speak to you ? 
 And did you speak to him again ? 
 How strange it seems, and new f 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 LOCKWOOD & COOMBES, 275, FIFTH AVENUE.
 
 MY DEAR AND VALUED FRIEND, 
 
 HOBART CLARK, 
 
 I SEND THIS LITTLE VOLUME ACROSS THE 
 ATLANTIC. 
 
 The unspoken lies nearer the heart than any uttered 
 word.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF THE 
 
 READER I 
 
 II. TOWARDS THE INFINITE . . 26 
 
 III. MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES 47 
 
 IV. SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BE- 
 TWEEN 96 
 
 V. SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY . .158 
 
 VI. WITH AN OLD LION . . .179 
 
 VII. BEHIND THE SCENES . . .189 
 
 VIII. NOT THROUGH INTELLECT ALONE 222 
 
 IX. CAMPING OUT .... 231 
 
 X. A PASSING GLIMPSE . . .235 
 
 XI. A GIANT IN THE PATH . . 239 
 
 xii. "FOUND AGAIN IN THE HEART 
 
 OF A FRIEND". . . . 244 
 
 XIII. SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER CAME 251 
 
 XIV. BY THK RIVER-SIDE 26l
 
 I. 
 
 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 THE READER. 
 
 " // is the nature of the soul to appropriate all 
 things. . . . I conquer and incorporate them in 
 my own conscious domain. His virtue, is not 
 that mine ? fits wit, if it cannot be made mine, 
 it is not wit." EMERSON : " Compensation." 
 
 " My respiration rose ; I felt a rapid fire colour- 
 ing my face. . . . I was Eucharisfor Telemachus, 
 and Erminia for Tancred ; however, during this 
 perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I 
 myself was anything, for anyone. The whole had 
 no connection with myself ; I sought for nothing 
 around me ; I was them, I saw only the objects 
 which existed for them ; it was a dream, without 
 being awakened" MADAME ROLAND'S descrip- 
 tion of her first reading of Telemachus and 
 Tasso. 
 
 THE gods need never trouble them- 
 selves to bestow a greater gift upon 
 a favourite child than a powerful 
 and healthy imagination. I use 
 
 i 
 
 c-
 
 2 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 the word " healthy " as a qualifier, 
 knowing right well, with every stu- 
 dent of literary biography, that an 
 untamed imagination, running riot 
 and causing its possessor to in- 
 dulge in all kinds of freaks, mental 
 and otherwise, is often a curse. Let 
 there, however, but be mixed with it 
 in its original bestowment a spice of 
 pure and honest reasonableness a 
 wee grain of the power to look at 
 everyday facts as they are and the 
 future of the chosen child of the 
 gods is assured.* Without this "wee 
 grain" on board ship the unmanaged 
 sails will prove but playthings for 
 wildest winds, and the craft be 
 thrown on all kinds of perilous 
 rocks ; but with it its course will be 
 pursued with ease and harmony ; 
 still rapid, but safe. 
 
 * One is tempted to parody the axiom of the 
 elder Shandy, and to say: "An ounce of judg- 
 ment, in its proper place, is worth a ton of 
 fancy, running wild."
 
 THE READER. 3 
 
 To read literary biography rightly 
 and with fullest enjoyment, a man 
 should certainly possess this healthy 
 imagination. Were I a phrase-coiner, 
 I would say that in his case it should 
 attain its fullest development as an 
 inquisitive-realistic-imagination ; and 
 for fear of being thought a heaper-up 
 of unnecessary words, I will go a 
 little further with these words of 
 mine, which threaten to hang about in 
 plenty just here. A writer of biography 
 occasionally works as an artist ; he has 
 carefully gone through the materials 
 at hand and formed for himself the 
 picture he desires his readers to see. 
 This he generally gives, and no one 
 can blame him ; for his natural bias 
 has been (we will suppose) honestly 
 followed, and his best is the result. 
 Not so, however, always. Another 
 writer of biography or autobiography 
 will run in the cart-rut he finds in 
 front of him; he has no theory, no 
 
 i 2
 
 4 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 ideal ; he goes along with the simple 
 intent to get to the end, spreading 
 out as he goes all his available 
 facts ; and when he has finished 
 he mentally says to his readers : 
 " There, you have all that can 
 be known of the subject." Well 
 and good ; we find no fault with 
 such a recorder. Every fact is valu- 
 able in the life of a great man, as 
 Boswell no doubt thought, and as 
 Rousseau certainly did think. But 
 as the feast-giver does not consider 
 his own tastes only, so the writer is 
 not the only interested party ; his 
 readers come in for consideration. 
 One says as he cons the production : 
 " This incident I like. It is just 
 what should have been related of 
 such a man ; it throws floods of 
 light in upon his personality. Ad- 
 mirable work !" But another turns 
 up his nose, and exclaims : " What 
 humbug to be sure ! The subject of
 
 THE READER. 5 
 
 this book was a hero ; why should 
 I have thrust upon my notice par- 
 ticulars of where he walked with his 
 wife, and what he said to his gar- 
 dener ?" Here, then, lies the trouble; 
 we as writers go wrong with some 
 classes of readers, and we as readers 
 run afoul of certain biographers. And 
 painters and art -critics with their 
 " schools " tread the same thorny 
 path. Yet, after all, what a miser- 
 able world this would be but for 
 these differences, and these wise 
 veilings by Providence of the pure 
 and central truth ! for 
 
 " Absolute truth revealed, would serve to blind 
 The soul's bright eye, and sear with tongues of 
 
 flame 
 The sinews of the mind." 
 
 Each individual's predilections 
 make his light the light, his truth 
 the truth. 
 
 Bearing in mind, then, these varia- 
 tions of human taste and judgment,
 
 6 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 we see how valuable a gift to a reader, 
 especially of biography, is the inquisi- 
 tive-realistic-imagination to which we 
 have referred. Inquisitive the reader 
 must be, otherwise he will be satisfied 
 with any writer's estimate of a great 
 man. But he rather wishes to know 
 all the kinds of opinions shared by 
 the hero of his mood ; no incident is 
 too trifling for him to feel an interest 
 in it; no conversation too vapid if but 
 the man took a part therein. Realistic 
 he must needs also be ; for after he 
 has discovered all about his hero he 
 involuntarily commences the sifting 
 process, and fastens on to certain 
 occurrences or words to be dwelt 
 upon at length with a more fervent 
 interest than others : his realism 
 pounces upon what his subject 
 said or did on matters which have 
 an especial interest for him, and 
 which are peculiarly suited to his 
 considerations ; and, like the bee
 
 THE READER. 7 
 
 upon the flower, having settled upon 
 it, he occupies his position till all the 
 honey he cares for has been extracted. 
 I should, perhaps, rather say that his 
 realism focusses his powers of atten- 
 tion upon the attractive spot ; and 
 then, like the tiny portion of rock 
 covered by the limpet, it is for the 
 nonce his world to the entire ex- 
 clusion of all else. His fast-sticking 
 realization of the matter, narrowing 
 though it prove for the time, is power- 
 ful and effective ; and above all things 
 it serves his purpose. But it is his 
 imagination which breathes the breath 
 of life upon what of the fruits of his 
 inquisitiveness his realism has settled 
 upon and made its own ; and then, 
 lo ! the thing lives, and is (to him at 
 all events) supremely satisfying. 
 
 This threefold gift, then inquisi- 
 tive-realistic-imagination has in it 
 the elements of happiness ; breadth 
 certainly should be its concomitant.
 
 8 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 It enables a reader to pick definitely 
 and decidedly for himself out of varied 
 stores ; and it seals the choice by 
 clothing what has been selected in 
 garments which for him have sym- 
 metry, and in colours which to his 
 eyes are beautiful. 
 
 " You say you're fair, you know ; 
 'Tis our fancy makes you so." 
 
 The following pages are written for 
 those who find enjoyment in musing 
 and brooding, and repeating their 
 lives through memory.* Imagination 
 is certainly necessary to any enjoy- 
 ment of them. " Truth is one and 
 poor, like the cruse of Elijah's widow. 
 Imagination is the bold face that 
 multiplies its oil." 
 
 And it is possible for a man of 
 imagination to make a very heaven 
 
 * " Come, I will tell you a way how you may 
 live your time over again. Do but recollect, and 
 review what you have seen already, and the work 
 is done." Marcus Aurelius.
 
 THE READER. 9 
 
 for himself out of very trifling ele- 
 ments. His fancy, warmed by a 
 sensitive and passionate heart, can 
 clothe the most everyday occurrences 
 with a golden garb.* Realities may 
 be coarse, and in some cases ugly 
 and heavy and oppressive, and there 
 may be little that is truly sweet and 
 beautiful in many lives. But we 
 have our dreams ! " We are ill at 
 ease whilst we remain glued to earth, 
 hobbling along on our two feet which 
 drag us wretchedly here and there in 
 the place which impounds us. We 
 
 * In a recent after-dinner speech, Mr. George 
 Augustus Sala, in replying for Literature, said he 
 once knew a very worthy old citizen of Edinburgh 
 who settled his quarterly accounts with unfailing 
 punctuality, but always deducted 15 per cent., on 
 the ground that he had been intimate with Sir 
 Walter Scott. Continuing, Mr. Sala confessed 
 that his own claim to return thanks for Literature 
 was that he had been on intimate terms with, in- 
 deed the disciple and, after a manner, the pupil 
 of two great men of letters of the last genera- 
 tion Charles Dickens and William Makepeace 
 Thackeray. It was simply through his connection 
 with those giants of literature that he had the 
 honour to respond to the toast.
 
 io IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 need to live in another world, to 
 hover in the wide-air kingdom, to 
 build palaces in the clouds, to see 
 them rise and crumble, to follow in 
 a hazy distance the whims of their 
 moving architecture and the turns of 
 their golden volutes. In this fantas- 
 tic world, again, all must be pleasant 
 and beautiful, the heart and senses 
 must enjoy it, objects must be smiling 
 or picturesque, sentiments delicate or 
 lofty ; no crudity, incongruity, bru- 
 tality, savageness, must come to sully 
 with its excess the modulated har- 
 mony of this ideal perfection."* In 
 a life of dreams spent among the 
 notable literary men of the past, we 
 claim that it is possible to know an 
 enjoyment neither coarse nor vulgar, 
 but eminently restful, and conducive 
 to mental health. 
 
 It appears to us that Alfred Austin 
 succeeded in laying his hand on the 
 
 * Taine.
 
 THE READER. II 
 
 hem of Truth's garment when he de- 
 clared that " whatever the beloved 
 Children of the Muse may fondly 
 think, the world cares very little for 
 poetry, however much interest it may 
 show in certain poets.* It is, never- 
 theless, interested in poets the inci- 
 dents of whose lives resemble those 
 of a first-rate novel, or whose bio- 
 graphy can be made to resemble a 
 prose romance."t 
 
 And what poetry can equal that of 
 a possible life ? " If, invisible our- 
 selves, we could follow a single human 
 being through a single day of his life, 
 and know all his secret thoughts and 
 
 * A pretentious lady once said, at a notable 
 gathering, that she had " never read Shakespeare's 
 works herself, but had always entertained the 
 highest opinion of him as a man" 
 
 t The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table in one 
 of his many moods says : " I know the man I 
 would have a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive 
 fellow . . . who cares for nobody, except for the 
 virtue there is in what he says ; delights in taking 
 off big wigs and professional gowns, and in the 
 disem balm ing and unbandaging of all literary 
 mummies."
 
 12 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 hopes and anxieties, his prayers and 
 tears and good resolves, his pas- 
 sionate delights and struggles against 
 temptation all that excites and all 
 that soothes the heart of man we 
 should have poetry enough to fill a 
 volume. Nay, set the imagination 
 free, like another bottle-imp, and bid 
 it lift for you the roofs of the city, 
 street by street, and after a single 
 night's observation you may sit down 
 and write poetry and romance for the 
 rest of your life."* The merest in- 
 cident tinged with unusual colour, or 
 exhibiting other than ordinary fulfil- 
 ment, is sufficient to furnish an ex- 
 cellent foundation ; and the castle 
 built thereon towers into the clouds 
 which hide exalted regions from the 
 gaze of the multitude. And what a 
 life we live in it ! All that is prosaic 
 and commonplace is lost in the 
 shadowy distance. Ours is the life 
 
 * Longfellow.
 
 THE READER. 13 
 
 on the hill, and we see not the valley 
 below, where the patient bondman 
 toils like a beast of burden : we asso- 
 ciate with heroes, nay, with gods 
 and of our own making. We see the 
 tree-tops waving in the wind, and 
 hear the merry birds singing under 
 their green roofs ; and we choose to 
 forget for the time that at their 
 roots there are swine feeding upon 
 acorns. 
 
 Given, for instance and to cease 
 with figures of speech the fact that 
 two notable men, with refined tastes 
 in common, spent a certain evening 
 together, discoursing on subjects 
 of mutual interest, and what scope 
 we have for conjecture as to how 
 their hidden souls leaped out to 
 meet each other!* The freed ima- 
 gination lingers over such a meeting 
 
 * " I have seen Emerson," writes George Eliot 
 to a friend with all the jubilant recollection of a 
 genuine red-letter day " 1 have seen Emerson 
 the first man I have ever seen."
 
 i 4 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 for days and seasons. We live again, 
 for ourselves, the hours they thus 
 lived, or should have lived, during 
 that interview ; we hear again the 
 words they spoke, or should have 
 spoken ; and these help to make for 
 us a life, nay, a world, sacred and 
 personal and secluded. And what if 
 such interviews, of which we write, 
 were not all our fond fancy would 
 have them be ! They are enough for 
 us as we make them, and we are content. 
 One other point, not wholly insig- 
 nificant : to enjoy with anything like 
 thoroughness the " Interviews " be- 
 tween the notable personages whose 
 names will be found scattered along 
 the following pages, our readers must 
 bring with them something of the 
 hero-worship felt by Thackeray when 
 he said : " I should like to have been 
 Shakespeare's shoe-black, just to have 
 lived in his house, just to have wor- 
 shipped him, to have run on his
 
 THE READER. 15 
 
 errands, and seen that sweet, serene 
 face."* Surely such a love as this 
 was, in itself, a liberal education. 
 
 It does not matter how much 
 superior to the worshipper the hero 
 may be : the man who worships can- 
 not fail to feel himself, in a certain 
 sense, of kin to the object of his 
 adoration. The mere act of worship 
 has in itself an uplifting and refining 
 influence of no mean extent.^ In 
 this higher life we repeat, in however 
 crooked a fashion, the lives of the 
 great whose sayings and doings we 
 ponder over. The glimpses left to us 
 
 * Thackeray also liked to find indications of 
 this spirit of hero-worship in others. " One day 
 he was walking along Wych Street, a kind of 
 slum-thoroughfare leading to Drury Lane, when 
 he passed a group of dirty little street-arabs. One 
 little female tatterdemalion looked up at him as he 
 passed, and then called out to her younger brother, 
 ' Hi, Archie ! d'you know who him is ? He's 
 Becky Sharp.'" 
 
 t We draw the line, however, at conduct similar 
 to that of the Duchess of Marlborough, who, after 
 Congreve's death, is said to have preserved his 
 memory by inviting to her table, as a constant 
 guest, an automaton model of him in ivory.
 
 16 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 in the recordings of their friends 
 are as so many gaps in the hedge 
 through which we peer in upon the 
 paths they trod.* Through imagi- 
 native sympathy we become imme- 
 diate participators in the dramas 
 in which they acted. Our interest 
 in the matter is thus as highly 
 strung and intense as that of any 
 artist in his creations as intense, 
 for instance, as that once shown 
 by Thackeray, the story of which 
 will bear repetition as illustrative of 
 our meaning. It is related that one 
 day while The Newcomes was in course 
 of publication, Lowell, who was then 
 in London, met Thackeray on the 
 street. " The novelist was serious in 
 manner, and his looks and voice told 
 
 * " The authors truly remembered and loved are 
 men in the best sense of the term ; the human, 
 the individual, informs and stamps their books with 
 an image or an effluence not born of will or mere 
 ingenuity, but emanating from the soul ; and this 
 is the quality that endears and perpetuates their 
 fame." Tuckerman.
 
 THE READER. 17 
 
 of weariness and affliction. He saw 
 the kindly inquiry in the poet's eyes, 
 and said : ' Come into Evans's, and 
 I'll tell you all about it. I have killed 
 the Colonel /'* So they walked in and 
 took a table in a remote corner ; and 
 then Thackeray, drawing the fresh 
 manuscript from his breast-pocket, 
 
 * Walter Herries Pollock tells us an anecdote of 
 Anthony Trollope which is curious and character- 
 istic. " He was by no means," says Pollock, 
 "given to talking of his own accord about his own 
 works, past and present ; indeed, I do not re- 
 member to have ever heard him do so except on 
 this occasion, when he was writing 7^he Last 
 Chronicle of Barset, and he took an opportunity 
 of observing that there was an end of Mrs. Proudie. 
 Being asked why, he replied that he had been 
 writing in the Club, and that round the fire- 
 place in the room there was gathered a group of 
 young clergymen. They were talking about The 
 Last Chronicle, and it was impossible for him to 
 avoid hearing what they said. They spoke of the 
 work in high praise, but they all agreed as to one 
 point that Mrs. Proudie was becoming an in- 
 tolerable nuisance. ' What did you do ?' we asked. 
 ' Well,' he replied, ' I hesitated a good deal what 
 to do. But I finally made up my mind, and went 
 up to them and explained that I couldn't help 
 hearing what they were saying, and I added : " I'm 
 very much obliged to you. I am Anthony Trol- 
 lope, and I'll go home at once and kill Mrs. 
 Proudie." ' And he did.
 
 i8 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 read through that exquisitely touch- 
 ing chapter which records the death 
 of Colonel Newcome. When he came 
 to the final Adsum, the tears which 
 had been swelling his lids for some 
 time trickled down his face, and the 
 last word was almost an inarticu- 
 late sob."* 
 
 * In some recently-published reminiscences of 
 Thackeray, Mr. C. P. Cranch relates his having 
 met him in London in 1855. "At an adjourn- 
 ment after dinner to the ' Cider Cellar ' a very 
 plainly-furnished but comfortable parlour on the 
 rirst-floor Thackeray said to the company : ' By 
 the way, have you seen the last number of 77ie 
 Neweomes ?' 
 
 " The company said they had not. 
 
 " 'Then,' said Thackeray, ' I should very much 
 like to read you some of it. It is just out.' We 
 all, of course, says Mr. Cranch, expressed an 
 eager pleasure in this opportunity of hearing him 
 read anything from his own books. Whereupon 
 he summoned a waiter, and said : 
 
 " ' Here, waiter here's a shilling I want you 
 to go out and buy for me the last number of 1 'he 
 Newcomes. ' 
 
 ' ' It was soon brought ; and Thackeray began to 
 read, and read for an hour, I should think, in his 
 quiet, half-plaintive voice, some of the closing 
 scenes in his novel. We were all deeply interested. 
 I think the last page he read described the death- 
 bed of Colonel Newcome. ... I have recorded 
 this meeting exactly as it occurred, as there has 
 been another version published, not quite correct."
 
 THE READER. 19 
 
 And yet another instance, perhaps 
 not so well known, of this finer sym- 
 pathy, this absolute surrender of self 
 to what is unseen, but none the less 
 thoroughly realized. " One day Mrs. 
 Henry Siddons, a neighbour and in- 
 timate of Lord Jeffrey, who often 
 entered his library unannounced, 
 opened the door very gently to see if 
 he were there, and saw enough at a 
 glance to convince her that the visit 
 was ill-timed. The hard critic of the 
 Edinburgh Review was sitting in his 
 chair with his head on the table in 
 deep grief. As Mrs. Siddons was 
 retiring, in the hope that her entrance 
 had been unnoticed, Jeffrey raised 
 his head and kindly beckoned her 
 back. Perceiving that his cheek was 
 flushed, and his eyes suffused with 
 tears, she begged permission to with- 
 draw. When he found that she was 
 intending to leave him, he rose from 
 
 2 2
 
 20 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 his chair, took her by both hands, 
 and led her to a seat. 
 
 " ' Don't go, my dear friend ; I 
 shall be right again in another 
 minute.' 
 
 " ' I had no idea you had had any 
 bad news, or cause for grief, or I 
 would not have come. Is anyone 
 dead ?' 
 
 " ' Yes, indeed. I'm a great goose 
 to have given way so, but I could 
 not help it. You'll be sorry to hear 
 that little Nelly Boz's little Nelly- 
 is dead.' " 
 
 Trifles like these often possess a 
 distinct value of their own ; and, 
 after all, " it is only by the light of 
 the tittle-tattle of tradition that we 
 can stroll along Fleet Street with 
 Dr. Johnson to the Mitre Tavern, or 
 to the Kit-Cat to meet Burke, and 
 Gibbon, and Goldsmith ; spend half 
 an hour with Cowper in his work- 
 shop ; or walk down the High
 
 THE READER. 21 
 
 Street of Edinburgh with Professor 
 Wilson to his class-room, ' with a 
 book under his arm and a week's 
 beard on his chin.' " 
 
 Surely the gist of the whole matter 
 of which we write is admirably ex- 
 pressed in the words of Victor 
 Cousin : " If beauty, absent and 
 dreamed of, does not affect you as 
 much as, and more than, present 
 beauty, you may have a thousand 
 other gifts that of imagination has 
 been refused you." 
 
 Landor once said that most things 
 were real to him except realities : 
 and this we can well understand from 
 several incidents in his life all not- 
 able interviews, by the way, and with 
 literary men too. One such will 
 suffice for the present. When 
 troubles hung thickly around him on 
 account of his foolish conduct in the 
 matter of the Bath scandal ; when 
 his personal property had been all
 
 22 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 sold and his real estate transferred to 
 his eldest son, and he was being 
 hurried off to the Continent by his 
 friends, he " arrived suddenly at Mr. 
 Forster's house, where Dickens and 
 some others were at dinner. Dickens 
 left the table to see him, expecting 
 naturally to find him broken and 
 cast down. But the old man's 
 thoughts were far away ; he seemed 
 as though no ugly or infuriating 
 realities had any existence for him, 
 and sat talking in his most genial 
 vein, principally about Latin Poetry."* 
 " I would not blot him out, in his 
 tender gallantry, as he sat upon his 
 bed at Forster's that night," said one 
 of his friends, " for a million wild 
 mistakes at eighty-four years of age." 
 If there really is but a thin par- 
 tition between great wit and madness, 
 then is one to be often pardoned for 
 an unjust estimate of a great man. 
 
 * Colvin's Landor.
 
 THE READER. 23 
 
 Take, for instance, the first appear- 
 ance of Jonathan Swift on the 
 scene where afterwards he was to 
 be the moving spirit. We are in- 
 troduced to him at the famous 
 coffee-house in Covent Garden kept 
 by Button, and frequented by the 
 gentlemen who were termed " the 
 wits." These wits, one of them 
 tells us, had for several successive 
 days observed in the coffee-house a 
 strange clergyman, who seemed 
 utterly unacquainted with any of 
 them, and whose custom it was to 
 lay his hat down on a table, and 
 " walk backward and forward at a 
 good pace for half an hour, or an 
 hour, without speaking to any mortal, 
 or seeming in the least to attend to 
 anything that was going forward 
 there. He then used to take up his 
 hat, pay his money at the bar, and 
 walk away without opening his lips." 
 The onlookers, as may be supposed,
 
 24 IMAGINATION DEMANDED OF 
 
 were greatly fluttered by the ap- 
 parition ; for, " having observed his 
 singular behaviour for some time, 
 they concluded him to be out of 
 his senses, and the name that he 
 went by among them was that of 
 ' The Mad Parson.' " One evening, 
 as Mr. Addison and the rest of 
 the wits were observing this strange 
 character, they saw him cast his 
 eyes several times on "a gentleman 
 in boots, who seemed to be just 
 come out of the country ;" and at 
 last, " in a very abrupt manner, with- 
 out any previous salute" for Swift 
 even then did not fashion himself to 
 the formalities " asked him if he re- 
 membered any good weather in the 
 world." The gentleman in boots, 
 after staring a little at the oddity of 
 the question, answered that he "re- 
 membered a great deal." " That is 
 more than I can say," rejoined the 
 questioner. " I never remember any
 
 THE READER. 25 
 
 that was not too hot or too cold, too 
 wet or too dry. But, however God 
 Almighty contrives it, at the end of 
 the year it is all very well."* The 
 spectators of this scene, who had 
 quitted their seats to get nearer the 
 interlocutors, were, we are told, more 
 than ever confirmed in their opinion 
 of the strange parson's madness. 
 
 * Literature and its Professors, by Thomas 
 Purnell.
 
 II. 
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 " The ancient Aryans felt from the beginning, 
 ay, it may be, more in the beginning than after- 
 wards, the presence of a Beyond, of an Infinite, of 
 a Divine, or whatever else we may call it now ; and 
 they tried to grasp and comprehend it, as we all do, 
 by giving to it name after name. . . . They for- 
 sook the bright Devas, not because they believed or 
 desired less, but because they believed and desired 
 more than the bright Devas. There was a new 
 conception working in their mind ; and the cries 
 of despair were but the harbingers of a new 
 birth." MAX MULLER : " On the Origin and 
 Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religions 
 of India." 
 
 " Mystical, more than magical, is that Com- 
 muning of Soul with Soul, both looking heaven- 
 ward : here properly Soul first speaks with Soul." 
 CARLYLE : " Sartor Resartus." 
 
 THIS age of ours is certainly one 
 of mental unrest. Everyone has 
 views and aspirations of his own
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 27 
 
 on all subjects, from the earth- 
 worm to the over-soul. Doubt of 
 some kind or other generally runs 
 in harness with these views and 
 aspirations, or rather, usually pre- 
 cedes them. It is sometimes of 
 a low and frivolous character, pre- 
 tentious and boasting, blowing a 
 trumpet to indicate its existence. 
 The doubter says to himself in 
 foolish pride : " The greatest men of 
 the age are unbelievers, and I will 
 be one, for I, too, am superior 
 to the common herd." Alas, poor 
 fool ! Why not drive a thoroughly 
 logical conclusion, and say : " The 
 greatest singers of the day, Tenny- 
 son, Browning, and two or three 
 others, fasten their boots with tagged 
 laces, and so do I ; therefore I, too, 
 am a great singer." 
 
 But to the man of tender, yet 
 strong, nature, whose desire to get 
 nearer his God is the hunger and
 
 28 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 thirst of his life, and who, in his 
 struggle to that end, has to cast 
 aside some of the accumulated ideas 
 of centuries on minor points ; who, 
 whilst floundering in mental uncer- 
 tainty, still keeps his heart pure and 
 turned to the white light of God's 
 presence in the soul ; who, whilst 
 surrounded by slighting looks and 
 pitying shoulder -shrugs, can sit tran- 
 quilly by his own hearthstone and 
 croon to himself such an intense 
 throb as Newman's " Lead, Kindly 
 Light " to such an one God's smile 
 goes out, and the strong heart-grip of 
 the noblest men now living on this 
 dear earth of ours. 
 
 I wish to write no deification of 
 doubt : rather would I sing of the 
 quiet lanes where restful trust wan- 
 ders content where heaven's sun- 
 shine falls through the green leaves 
 overhead, and the song of the soaring 
 lark is heard. But the manly utter-
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 29 
 
 ances of Max Miiller, in his Hibbert 
 Lectures, ring again and again in our 
 ears, teaching us not only lessons of 
 sympathy and brotherliness, but also 
 of reliance on some of the ways of 
 the soul. " Now I know perfectly 
 well," he said in one of those notable 
 discourses, delivered in the Chapter 
 House of Westminster Abbey, "that 
 what I have said just now will be 
 misunderstood, will possibly be mis- 
 interpreted. I know I shall be ac- 
 cused of having defended and glorified 
 atheism, and of having represented it 
 as the last and highest point which 
 man can reach in an evolution of 
 religious thought. Let it be so ! If 
 there are but a few here present who 
 understand what I mean by honest 
 atheism, and who know how it differs 
 from vulgar atheism ay, from dis- 
 honest theism, I shall feel satisfied ; 
 for I know that to understand that 
 distinction will often help us in the
 
 30 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 hour of our sorest need. It will 
 teach us that, while the old leaves 
 the leaves of a bright and happy 
 spring are falling, and all seems 
 wintry, frozen, and dead, within and 
 around us there is, and there must 
 be, a new spring in store for every 
 warm and honest heart. It will 
 teach us that honest doubt is the 
 deepest spring of honest faith ; and 
 that he only who has lost can find." 
 
 In this connection we cannot, of 
 course, fail to remember the memor- 
 able occasion of Emerson's visit to 
 Carlyle at Craigenputtock, when they 
 went out together on the brown hills, 
 and sat down and talked of the im- 
 mortality of the soul. " I came," 
 wrote Emerson some time after- 
 wards, "from Glasgow to Dumfries, 
 and being intent on delivering a 
 letter which I had brought from 
 Rome, inquired for Craigenputtock. 
 It was a farm in Nithsdale, in the
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 31 
 
 parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles 
 distant. No public coach passed 
 near it, so I took a private carriage 
 from the inn. I found the house 
 amid desolate heathery hills, where 
 the lonely scholar nourished his 
 mighty heart. Carlyle was a man 
 from his youth, an author who did 
 not need to hide from his readers, 
 and as absolute a man of the world, 
 unknown and exiled on that hill- 
 farm, as if holding in his own terms 
 what is best in London. He was 
 tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, 
 self-possessed, and holding his extra- 
 ordinary powers of conversation in 
 easy command ; clinging to his 
 northern accent with evident relish ; 
 full of lively anecdote, and with a 
 streaming humour which floated 
 everything he looked upon. . . . Few- 
 were the objects, and lonely the man 
 ' not a person to speak to within 
 sixteen miles except the minister of
 
 32 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 Dunscore ' so that books inevitably 
 made his topics. . . . We went out 
 to walk over the long hills, and 
 looked at Criffel, then without his 
 cap, and down into Wordsworth's 
 country. There we sat down and 
 talked of the immortality of the soul" 
 
 This "talk" must be to us solely of 
 our own liking and formation, based 
 upon what we can glean of the views 
 of these two friends ; for what else on 
 this point is given us by Emerson is 
 vague and suggestive only. " It was 
 not Carlyle's fault," he continues, 
 " that we talked on that topic, for 
 he had the natural disinclination of 
 every nimble spirit to bruise itself 
 against walls, and did not like to 
 place himself where no steps can be 
 taken. But he was honest and true, 
 and cognisant of the subtle links that 
 bind ages together, and saw how 
 every event affects all the future. 
 ' Christ died on the tree : that built
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 33 
 
 Dunscore kirk yonder : that brought 
 you and me together. Time has only 
 a relative existence. ' ' 
 
 What a subject is thus opened up 
 for speculation ! I remember as a 
 youth reading and re-reading the 
 account of this meeting, and piecing 
 together in my mind the lines which 
 possibly might have been taken by 
 the talkers. All the charm of that 
 early endeavour " to force by con- 
 jecture a passage into other people's 
 thoughts " recurs to me as I write 
 the simple words which still have 
 the old-time, mystical music about 
 them : " There we sat down and talked 
 of the immortality of the soul."* 
 
 * Carlyle referred with enthusiasm to this meet- 
 ing, and of their "quiet night of clear, fine talk." 
 He spoke lovingly of the day " when that supernal 
 vision, Waldo Emerson, dawned on him." 
 
 It is currently reported that Carlyle liked to re- 
 member that other evening, in London, on which 
 Tennyson and he sat in solemn silence smoking 
 for hours. " Man Alfred," said Carlyle, as he 
 bade his visitor good-night, " we have ha'en a 
 graund nicht ; come back again soon !"
 
 34 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 Years afterwards, when Emerson 
 again visited Carlyle, it is said that 
 they sat by themselves a goodly por- 
 tion of the evening, in the dark, talk- 
 ing only of God and immortality, as 
 if anxious to discover whether their 
 philosophy had thrown any clearer 
 light on the all-absorbing topics dis- 
 cussed by them on the Scotch 
 hills.* 
 
 At Kirkcaldy, long before this, 
 Carlyle had made, or strengthened, 
 an acquaintance with Edward Irving, 
 like himself an Annandale man, 
 like himself a student of divinity, 
 and, once more, like himself, a teacher 
 in a Kirkcaldy school. " By resi- 
 dents in Kirkcaldy," says Dix, "I 
 
 * "I must tell you a story Miss Bremer got 
 from Emerson. Carlyle was very angry with him 
 for not believing in a devil, and to convert him 
 took him amongst all the horrors of London the 
 gin-shops, etc. and finally to the House of Com- 
 mons, plying him at every turn with the question, 
 ' Do you believe in a devil noo ?' " George Eliot 
 to Sara Hennell, 3rd Nov., 1851.
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 35 
 
 have heard the two described as 
 often seen walking on the sea-beach 
 in earnest conversation, and no 
 doubt the doctrines of the Church, 
 which both were preparing to enter, 
 formed frequently a main portion of 
 their talk, to which it would not be 
 surprising if Carlyle contributed the 
 sceptical, and Irving the believing, 
 portion. It is curious that both 
 these men should afterwards have 
 made so very peculiar a figure in 
 London, as stormy denouncers (each 
 in his own fashion) of the estab- 
 lished present, and prophets of a 
 better future."* 
 
 * What Carlyle wrote as an epitaph on Irving 
 came forth hot and earnest, and direct from his 
 heart. " He referred to his short life (forty-two 
 years only) of his thorough truth, of his youth 
 maturing in the Scotch solitudes and, after abiding 
 for a time in the cold northern city, of his being 
 cast into this blazing Babylon, where he was at 
 first smothered with caresses, and then denounced 
 by the fickle, veering idolaters who crawled at his 
 feet. Yet not a fact could be urged against him, 
 except that his opinions differed from theirs. So 
 they cast him down into the satanic pit, amongst 
 
 32
 
 36 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 As I look out just now from my 
 study window upon the stars, steel- 
 blue above the downs, my thoughts 
 are carried away to another meet- 
 ing (or, rather, break-up of a meet- 
 ing), at which Carlyle took his part. 
 I know right well that these stories 
 of the Chelsea Sage are common pro- 
 perty with all readers ; but they suit 
 my mood and purpose, and I use 
 them accordingly, though not to fill 
 the pages of this little volume with 
 padding.* Soon after the publica- 
 
 the refuse of their kind, and went on worshipping 
 another image some coarse Belial whom they 
 had themselves manufactured, and transfigured 
 into a god." 
 
 * There seems to me nothing in our literature 
 more full of genuine human feeling, unparaded as 
 it is, than the following, extracted from Carlyle's 
 Life of John Sterling. The man Carlyle, at his 
 best, is in it. " But now," he says, "autumn ap- 
 proaching, Sterling had to quit clubs for matters 
 of sadder consideration. A new removal, what 
 we call ' his third peregrinity,' had to be decided 
 on ; and it was resolved that Rome should be the 
 goal of it, the journey to be done in company with 
 Calvert, whom, also, the Italian climate might be 
 made to serve instead of Madeira. One of the
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 37 
 
 tion of Heroes and Hero-Worship, 
 Carlyle and Leigh Hunt were to- 
 gether at a small party, and a con- 
 versation was started between these 
 two concerning the heroism of man. 
 " Leigh Hunt had said something 
 about the islands of the blest, or El 
 Dorado, or the Millennium, and was 
 flowing on his bright and hopeful 
 
 liveliest recollections I have, connected with the 
 Anonymous Club [a little club, established by John 
 Sterling, where monthly, over a frugal dinner, a 
 small select company of persons, to whom it was 
 pleasant to talk, used to meet, having Tennyson as 
 one of the number, and James Spedding for secre- 
 tary], is that of once escorting Sterling, after a 
 certain meeting there, which I had seen only to- 
 wards the end, and now remember nothing of, 
 except that, on breaking up, he proved to be en- 
 cumbered with a carpet-bag, and could not at 
 once find a cab for Knightsbridge. Some little 
 bantering hereupon, during the instants of embargo. 
 But we carried his carpet-bag, slinging it on my 
 stick, two or three of us alternately, through dusty 
 vacant streets, under the gaslight and the stars, 
 towards the surest cab-stand, still jesting, or pre- 
 tending to jest, he and we, not in the mirthfulest 
 manner, and had (I suppose) our own feelings 
 about the poor pilgrim, who was to go on the 
 morrow, and had hurried to meet us in this way, 
 as the last thing before leaving England."
 
 38 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 way, when Carlyle dropped some 
 heavy tree-trunk across Hunt's plea- 
 sant stream, and banked it up with 
 philosophical doubts and objections 
 at every interval of the speaker's 
 joyous progress. But the unmiti- 
 gated Hunt never ceased his over- 
 flowing anticipations, nor the satur- 
 nine Carlyle his infinite demurs to 
 these finite flourishings. The lis- 
 teners laughed and applauded by 
 turns, and had now fairly pitted 
 them against each other as the 
 philosopher of hopefulness and of 
 the unhopeful. The contest con- 
 tinued with all that ready wit and 
 philosophy, that mixture of plea- 
 santry and profundity, that exten- 
 sive knowledge of books and char- 
 acter, with their ready application in 
 argument or illustration, and that 
 perfect ease and good-nature which 
 distinguished both of these men. 
 The opponents were so well matched
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 39 
 
 that it was quite clear the contest 
 would never come to an end. But 
 the night was far advanced, and the 
 party broke up. They all sallied 
 forth, and, leaving the close room, 
 the candles and the arguments be- 
 hind them, suddenly found them- 
 selves in presence of a most brilliant 
 star-lit night. They all looked up. 
 ' Now,' thought Hunt, ' Carlyle's 
 done for ! He can have no answer 
 to that !' 
 
 " ' There !' shouted Hunt; 'look up 
 there look at that glorious harmony, 
 that sings with infinite voices an 
 eternal song of hope in the soul of 
 man.' 
 
 " Carlyle looked up. They all re- 
 mained silent to hear what he would 
 say. They began to think he was 
 silenced at last ; he was a mortal 
 man. But out of that silence came 
 a few low-toned words, in a broad 
 Scotch accent. And who on earth
 
 40 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 could have anticipated what the voice 
 said? 
 
 "'Eh, it's a sad sight !' 
 
 " Hunt sat down on a stone step. 
 They all laughed, then looked very 
 thoughtful. Had the finite measured 
 itself with infinity, instead of surren- 
 dering itself up to the influence ? 
 Again they laughed, then bade each 
 other good-night, and betook them- 
 selves homewards with slow and 
 serious pace."* 
 
 How different to all this were the 
 conversations on the same all-absorb- 
 ing topics which took place between 
 Baxter and Sir Matthew Hale, of 
 
 * Home's New Spirit of the Age. 
 
 What a right lovable and kindly spirit had 
 Leigh Hunt I After a dinner at the house of 
 Barry Cornwall, at which Kinglake and Haw- 
 thorne, amongst others, were present, when the 
 gentlemen rose to join the ladies in the drawing- 
 room, " the two dear old poets, Leigh Hunt and 
 Barry Cornwall, mounted the stairs with their 
 arms round each other in a very tender and loving 
 way. Hawthorne often referred to this scene as 
 one he would not have missed for a great deal."
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 41 
 
 which the former tells us : " The 
 conference which I had frequently 
 with him, mostly about the immor- 
 tality of the soul and other philo- 
 sophical and foundation points, was 
 so edifying that his very questions 
 and objections did help me to more 
 light than other men's solutions." 
 
 Mr. F.W. H. Myers, in an extremely 
 interesting article on George Eliot, 
 tells of how he once walked with her 
 at Cambridge, in the Fellows' garden 
 of Trinity, on an evening of rainy 
 May, when " she, stirred somewhat 
 beyond her wont, and taking as her 
 text the three words which have 
 been used so often as the inspiring 
 trumpet-calls of men the words 
 God, Immortality, Duty pronounced 
 with terrible earnestness how incon- 
 ceivable was the first, how unbeliev- 
 able the second, and yet how peremp- 
 tory and absolute the third. Never, 
 perhaps," he continues, " have sterner
 
 42 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 accents affirmed the sovereignty of 
 impersonal and unrecompensing law. 
 I listened, and night fell ; her grave, 
 majestic countenance turned toward 
 me like a sibyl's in the gloom ; it 
 was as though she withdrew from 
 my grasp one by one the two scrolls 
 of promise, and left me the third 
 scroll only, awful with inevitable 
 fates. And when we stood at length 
 and parted, amid that columnar 
 circuit of the forest trees, beneath 
 the last twilight of starless skies, I 
 seemed to be gazing, like Titus at 
 Jerusalem, on vacant seats and 
 empty halls on a sanctuary with 
 no presence to hallow it, and heaven 
 left lonely of a God." 
 
 To many noble-hearted men and 
 women, even nowadays, nothing is 
 left but their duty. Through some 
 defect in their soul's sight they 
 fail to see the ultimate of the busy 
 speculation with which this nine-
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 43 
 
 teenth century is rife nay, they 
 scarce see even its true tendency. 
 Its way is so devious ; and the maze 
 through which it subtly glides is so 
 overgrown and difficult of penetra- 
 tion, that it is a matter of no wonder 
 that a shrewd conjecture is often 
 made to take the place of definite 
 knowledge. But work is definite 
 and always near at hand something 
 upon which energy can be legiti- 
 mately expended, and from which 
 results can be calculated with pre- 
 cision. And the truth remains ever 
 fresh, that " to forget yourself in some 
 worthy purpose outside of yourself 
 is the secret of a rich and happy 
 life." Many a man, wrapped round 
 with the coils of black doubt, can, 
 equally with him who lives in the 
 sunshine of faith, set his seal to the 
 truth of what has been written of 
 the glory of true work earnestly per- 
 formed. I say true work earnestly per-
 
 44 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 formed, having in my mind the saying 
 of Emerson : " God will not have 
 His work made manifest by cowards. 
 A man is relieved and gay when he 
 has put his heart into his work and 
 done his best ; but what he has said 
 or done otherwise shall give him no 
 peace. It is a deliverance which 
 does not deliver. In the attempt 
 his genius deserts him ; no muse 
 befriends ; no invention, no hope." 
 
 I should like to have seen the 
 grim visage of Carlyle, and the play 
 upon the features of William Black 
 the novelist, at that interview when 
 the Chelsea Sage put the posing 
 question to his younger brother of 
 the pen who, by the way, has given us 
 such charming stories : " But when 
 are ye going to do some wark ?"* 
 
 * Mr. Carlyle's severest critic, and a critic of his 
 own school, was an old parish roadman at Eccle- 
 fechan. 
 
 " Been a long time in this neighbourhood ?" 
 once asked an American traveller on the outlook 
 for a sight of the sage.
 
 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 45 
 
 In these days of raving about 
 genius and its prescriptive rights of 
 vagabondage and irresponsibility, it 
 is refreshing to read the definite 
 statements made about work, even 
 though the sentiment be common- 
 place and has found a home in every 
 
 " Been here a' ma days, sir." 
 
 " Then you'll know the Carlyles ?" 
 
 " Weel that ! A ken the whole o' them. There 
 was, let me see," he said, leaning on his shovel 
 and pondering, " there was Jock ; he was a kind o' 
 throughither sort o' chap, a doctor, but no a bad 
 fellow, Jock he's deid, mon." 
 
 " And there was Thomas," said the inquirer 
 eagerly. 
 
 " Oh, ay, of coorse, there's Tam a useless, 
 munestruck chap that writes in London. There's 
 naething in Tam ; but, mon, there's Jamie, owre 
 in the Newlands there's a chap for ye ; he's the 
 mon o' the family. Jamie tak's maire swine into 
 Ecclefechan market than any ither farmer in the 
 parish." 
 
 This is all very much like the story of the 
 Scottish driver of pigs, who, hearing it declared that 
 he was a greater man than the Duke of Wellington, 
 scratched his thick head, and with a satisfied ex- 
 pression said : " Aweel, Wellington was a great 
 mon, and verra smart in his own way ; but I doot 
 1 doot, if he could ha' driven seven hundred 
 pigs frae Edinboro to Lonnon and not lose one 
 as 7 ha' done."
 
 46 TOWARDS THE INFINITE. 
 
 teacher's exhortation. There is a 
 genuine ring about such as the fol- 
 lowing: "Work every hour, paid or 
 unpaid ; see only that you work, and 
 you cannot escape your reward. 
 Whether your work be fine or coarse, 
 planting corn or writing epics, so 
 only it be honest work, done to your 
 own approbation, it shall earn a re- 
 ward to the senses as well as to the 
 thought. No matter how often de- 
 feated, you are born to victory. The 
 reward of a thing well done is to 
 have done it."
 
 III. 
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 " We had experience of a blissful state, 
 In -which our powers of thought stood separate, 
 Each in its own high freedom held apart ', 
 Yet both close folded in one loving heart ; 
 So that -we seemed, without conceit, to be 
 Both one, and two, in our identity" 
 
 MlLNES. 
 
 <: Genius without sympathetic recognition is like 
 a kindled fire without flue or draught ; it smoulders 
 miserably away instead of leaping, sparkling, and 
 giving cheer." BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 " Gaze thou in the face of thy brother, in those 
 eyes where plays the lambent fire of kindness . . . 
 feel how thy own so quiet soul is straightway in- 
 voluntarily kindled with the like, and ye blaze and 
 reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless 
 confluent flame . . . and then say what miraculous 
 virtue goes out of man into man" CARLYLE. 
 
 NOTHING tends more to lay a man's 
 soul bare than to have a sympathetic 
 listener or two. The world's cold
 
 48 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 criticism is all forgotten in the pre- 
 sence of friendly hearts and answer- 
 ing eyes. These conditions are 
 often found by the world's workers 
 in select clubs,* where man meets 
 man without formality or restraint 
 of any kind ; where he expects to 
 find, and generally does find, in his 
 brother something admirable and 
 charming.t And " if they are men 
 
 * To attempt to exhaust the subject of clubs in 
 a little book like the present would, it need hardly 
 be said, prove something akin to gathering the 
 hills together to stow in a barn. Volumes might 
 be written in this direction, and yet much would 
 be left unrecorded. To start even with the picture 
 of an evening at the Globe with Kit Marlowe 
 (alas, poor Kit ! " Christopher Marlowe, slain 
 by a serving-man in a drunken brawl, aged twenty- 
 nine ") and Shakespeare, Cowley and Green, Ned 
 Alleyn, George Peele, Nash, and the rest of the 
 merry crew, all in a storm of inspiration and drink, 
 would open up untold chapters in the literary 
 history of England. 
 
 t And this, notwithstanding Charlotte Bronte's 
 opinion on the matter. " All coteries," she 
 says in one of her letters, " whether they be 
 literary, scientific, political, or religious, must, it 
 seems to me, have a tendency to change truth into 
 affectation. When people belong to a clique, they 
 must, I suppose, in some measure, write, talk, 
 think, and live for that clique a harassing and 
 narrowing necessity."
 
 MUTUAL. ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 49 
 
 with noble powers and qualities, let 
 me tell you that, next to youthful 
 love and family affections, there is 
 no human sentiment better than that 
 which unites the societies of mutual 
 admiration. And what would litera- 
 ture or art be without such associa- 
 tions ? Who can tell what we owe 
 to the Mutual Admiration Society 
 of which Shakespeare and Ben Jon- 
 son, and Beaumont and Fletcher 
 were members ? Or to that of which 
 Addison and Steele formed the centre, 
 and which gave us the Spectator ? Or 
 to that where Johnson and Goldsmith, 
 and Burke and Reynolds, and Beau- 
 clerk and Boswell, most admiring 
 among all admirers, met together ?* 
 
 * "Who has not heard of the famous lobster 
 suppers of Pope, and the witty re-unions at Tom's 
 Coffee House, where ruffled and rapiered gallants 
 met to discuss liquor and literature, chat and 
 claret? or, who has not longed to make one of 
 such a party as that described, or rather referred 
 to, by the sprightly Lady Mary Wortley Montague, 
 who, with chosen associates, 
 
 " ' When the cares of the day are all pass'd 
 
 Sit down with champagne and a chicken at last ;' 
 
 4
 
 50 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 Was there any great harm in the 
 fact that the Irvings and Pauld- 
 
 and to what was far better, ' the feast of reason 
 and the flow of soul.' These ' long-ago ' affairs 
 have had their Boswells to chronicle them ; and 
 so graphic are some of the reports of these 
 symposia, that we seem, whilst perusing them, to 
 ' live over each scene.' In imagination we jostle 
 against flower-brocaded coats and embroidered 
 vests ; our modern legs get entangled in the 
 voluminous folds of the ample fardingales and 
 hoops, and high heels startle us with their grotesque 
 proportions. 
 
 "The times have changed; the days of the 
 blue-stocking clique are remembered as among the 
 things that were. Hannah More, Mrs. Delaney, 
 Mrs. Thrale, Mrs. Piozzi, and Madame D'Arblay 
 no longer sit sipping their souchong, and listening 
 to the oracular and ponderous sentences of Doctor 
 Johnson, or indulging in sprightly sentimentalisms, 
 or flippant nothings. Will's coffee-house is no 
 longer open to the Steeles, the Addisons, and the rest 
 of the town wits. Tom's exists, but is a lawyer's 
 dining-house. Ranelagh, with its variegated 
 leafy arcades, and brilliantly-lighted bowers, is no 
 more ; and all who gossiped so delightfully, or 
 talked so learnedly, a few years ago, have passed 
 away, leaving legacies of wit, wisdom and folly to 
 their descendants, who, in the cockney haunts of 
 Rosherville and Cremorne, make up for the almost 
 forsaken glories of Vauxhall that latest remnant 
 of old-fashioned gaiety. 
 
 "The times have greatly changed. Club-houses 
 have knocked the old coffee-houses into nothing- 
 ness ; and literary coteries are broken up suck 
 literary coteries, we mean, as the days to which 
 reference has been made could boast of." Dix's 
 Lions Living and Dead.
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 51 
 
 ing wrote in company? or any un- 
 pardonable cabal in the literary 
 union of Verplanck and Bryant and 
 Sands, and as many more as they 
 chose to associate with them ? 
 
 " The poor creature does not 
 know what he is talking about when 
 he abuses this noblest of institutions. 
 Let him inspect its mysteries through 
 the knot-hole he has secured, but 
 not use that orifice as a medium for 
 his popgun. Such a society is the 
 crown of a literary metropolis ; if a 
 town has not material for it, and 
 spirit and good feeling enough to 
 organize it, it is a mere caravansary, 
 fit for a man of genius to lodge in, 
 but not to live in. Foolish people 
 hate and dread and envy such an 
 association of men of varied powers 
 and influence, because it is lofty, 
 serene, impregnable, and, by the 
 necessity of the case, exclusive. 
 Wise ones are prouder of the title 
 
 42
 
 52 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 M.S.M.A., than of all their other 
 honours put together."* 
 
 And no small portion of the record 
 of what is best in literature is also a 
 history of cliques, in which the workers 
 helped each other by mutual criticism 
 as well as by mutual admiration. In 
 the very nature of events, one strong 
 or beautiful soul must needs, by 
 virtue of its magnetism, draw to it- 
 self others of similar character. 
 
 What notable gatherings and con- 
 ferences it is possible to construct 
 imaginatively when we have as a 
 basis for our operations the names 
 of the contributors to the first 
 number of the Edinburgh Review, 
 together with some odd particulars, 
 now tolerably well known, of how 
 the famous quarterly was started 
 and pushed out on its early way 
 among men ! And what a chant of 
 
 * Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast Table.
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 53 
 
 the wealth of intellect these names 
 sing for themselves ! Here they are : 
 Francis (afterwards Lord) Jeffrey; 
 Henry Brougham, subsequently Lord 
 Brougham ; Alexander Hamilton, 
 sometime Professor of Sanscrit in 
 the East India College at Haileybury; 
 Francis Horner, known to the read- 
 ing public through his memoirs 
 edited by his brother ; Sydney Smith, 
 " the witty parson," with his untied 
 tongue ; John Macfarlan, the serious, 
 studious, and retired lover of German 
 and metaphysics; Dr. John Thomson, 
 who occupied some years afterwards 
 the chair of pathology in the College 
 of Edinburgh ; Dr. Thomas Brown ; 
 and John Murray, afterwards Lord 
 Murray, a judge. 
 
 Of these in 1802 (the date of the 
 publication of the first number of 
 the Edinburgh), Smith was thirty- 
 one years of age ; Jeffrey, thirty ;
 
 54 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 Brown, twenty-four ; Horner, twenty- 
 four ; and Brougham, twenty-three. 
 
 These are the men with whom we 
 live again the life they spent during 
 the few months surrounding the 
 issue of the first number of their 
 Review, concerning which it has been 
 said : " The effect was electrical. 
 ... It is impossible for those who 
 did not live at the time, and in the 
 heart of the scene, to feel, or almost 
 to understand, the impression made 
 by the new luminary, or the anxieties 
 with which its motions were ob- 
 served. It was an entire and instant 
 change of everything that the public 
 had been accustomed to in that sort 
 of composition. The old periodical 
 opiates were extinguished at once." 
 
 Willis once said, in the course of 
 conversation with G. W. Curtis, that 
 people always read with avidity two 
 things stories of themselves and 
 of other people. The story of the
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 55 
 
 inception and early existence of the 
 Edinburgh Review, however often re- 
 peated, is certainly one to be read 
 with interest by all students of 
 literary history. The plain facts are 
 to be stated in few words. One 
 stormy night in March, 1802, a group 
 of friends met together in Jeffrey's 
 study (a room on the third story of a 
 house in Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, 
 and called by courtesy his " study," 
 the furnishing of which had been 
 completed at a cost of 7 i8s.) to 
 consider their positions in life and 
 the means of bettering them. What 
 a goodly company gathered there 
 around their host ! and what a storm 
 of laughter must have drowned the 
 storm without as one suggestion 
 after another fell from the lips of 
 Jeffrey, or Brougham, or Sydney 
 Smith, or Horner with the ten com- 
 mandments, as Smith used to say, 
 all written in the lines of his face
 
 56 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 as legibly as they were on the 
 tables of stone ! Smith's story is 
 (and it has been told also by Jeffrey 
 and Brougham) : " I proposed that 
 we should set up a Review, and this 
 was acceded to with acclamation. I 
 was appointed editor, and remained 
 long enough in Edinburgh to edit the 
 first number of the Edinburgh Re- 
 view." The question arose as to a 
 motto for the new publication. 
 Smith suggested (and what else could 
 be expected from such a man ?) that 
 they should take " Tenui Musam 
 meditamur avend " (" We cultivate 
 literature on a little oatmeal "), but 
 this was immediately ruled out of 
 court, and for one of the best pos- 
 sible reasons ; it was by far too 
 near the truth to be blazed abroad 
 from the house-tops. There was a 
 copy of Publius Syrus lying on the 
 table, and Horner, taking it up and 
 turning over the leaves, accidentally
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 57 
 
 hit on the words which still occupy 
 their position on the old buff and 
 blue : " Judex damnatur cum nocens 
 absolvitur /" Subsequently Constable 
 was chosen as publisher, and the 
 papers in the first three numbers 
 were supplied him without remunera- 
 tion. But the projectors of the Re- 
 view knew right well the man with 
 whom they had to deal. Lord 
 Cockburn's estimate of him, fti his 
 Memorials of his Time, is certainly a 
 pleasant picture. " Constable," he 
 writes, " had hardly set up for him- 
 self when he reached the summit of 
 his business. He rushed out and 
 took possession of the open field, as 
 if he had been aware from the first of 
 the existence of the latent spirits 
 which a skilful conjuror might call 
 from the depths of the population to 
 the service of literature. Abandoning 
 the old timid and grudging system, 
 he stood out as the general patron
 
 58 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 and payer of all promising publi- 
 cations, and confounded, not merely 
 his rivals in trade, but his very 
 authors, by his unheard-of prices. 
 Ten, even twenty, guineas a sheet 
 for a review, 2,000 or 3,000 for a 
 single poem, and 1,000 each for two 
 philosophical dissertations,* drew 
 authors from dens where they would 
 otherwise have starved, and made 
 Edinburgh a literary mart, famous 
 with strangers and the pride of its 
 own citizens." 
 
 Another picture, however, presents 
 itself as companion to the meeting 
 in Jeffrey's study, when the idea of 
 such a publication was started. It 
 is that of the writers skulking round 
 back lanes to throw possible watchers 
 off the scent before slipping quietly 
 into "the dingy room off Wilkinson's 
 printing-office, in Craig's Close," 
 
 * By Stewart and Playfair prefixed to a sup- 
 plement of the Encyclopedia Brila-nnica.
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 59 
 
 where they read over the proofs of 
 their own articles, and sat in judg- 
 ment on the few manuscripts offered 
 by strangers. Sydney Smith gives 
 us a peep at one of these meetings, 
 where he and Brougham sat together 
 over a glass of whisky to take the 
 conceit out of some sapient author. 
 " Once I remember," he says, " how 
 we got hold of a little vegetarian, 
 who had put out a silly little book ; 
 and how Brougham and I sat one 
 night over our review of that book, 
 looking whether there was a chink or 
 crevice through which we could filter 
 one more drop of verjuice." Such a 
 confession is really magnificent in its 
 artlessness. 
 
 Although many incidents are on 
 record having to do, in some measure, 
 with the Review and its writers, 
 much remains unwritten. But over 
 what we actually have, as reliable 
 information, our imagination broods,
 
 60 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 creating for us interviews and con- 
 versations which ought to have 
 taken place, thus enabling us, each 
 for himself, to grasp the romance 
 which surrounds such an epoch in 
 English literature. 
 
 Then there was that notable group 
 which at one time gathered at the 
 English lakes, and of which Words- 
 worth was the centre. " Here that 
 strange being, Thomas de Quincey, 
 came and lived, purposely to be near 
 the poet. Coleridge* was always at 
 call ; and loving and gentle Charles 
 Lamb came at times, sadly missing 
 the town, and almost afraid of the 
 mountains. Here Dr. Arnold, of 
 
 * Landor was displeased with Coleridge alto- 
 gether when he met him in London in 1832, 
 although the philosopher donned a new suit of 
 clothes for the occasion, and made many pretty 
 speeches to his visitor. Landor's dislike was 
 based upon two especial points : Coleridge would 
 talk about no one and nothing but himself, and 
 he would not pay the slightest attention to Landor's 
 enthusiastic mention of Southey.
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 61 
 
 Rugby, came often from Fox How, 
 his own house in the neighbourhood ; 
 hither Harriet Martineau walked over 
 from Ambleside, with some new theory 
 of the universe to expound ; and here 
 poor Hartley Coleridge passed the 
 happiest hours of his unfortunate 
 life." And not far distant lived 
 Southey in his magnificent library 
 looking out on the everlasting hills.* 
 But we must by no means forget 
 John Wilson, genial " Christopher 
 North," certainly one of the most 
 remarkable of the Lakists " stu- 
 dent, Bohemian, bookworm, sports- 
 man, professor ; the kindliest, merriest, 
 and most entertaining of com- 
 panions;" author of the Nodes Am- 
 brosiana. 
 
 * It was into this room that Southey one day 
 enticed Shelley under the delusion that he had a 
 treat for him ; and after locking the door dosed 
 him with his verses until the would-be listener fell 
 asleep under the table. He assured Shelley that 
 his Madoc was equal to the Odyssey.
 
 62 MUTUAL- ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 "In these same Nodes we have 
 descriptions of some of those nights 
 when, as Carlyle would have said, 
 ' there was much good talk.' And 
 Wilson was mainly the talker. The 
 chief characteristics of his discourse 
 were prodigality of humour and 
 infinite variety. His imagination, too, 
 ran riot, and his wit sparkled ever 
 and anon with a radiance all its own. 
 
 " His memory was prodigious, and 
 in his conversation he taxed it for 
 anecdotes and illustrations drawn 
 from the four quarters of the globe, 
 and from the most remote and un- 
 usual stores of literary hoarding. 
 His mind was many-sided as well 
 as keen, and he kept all his faculties 
 in full play, not excepting his sym- 
 pathies, which were as broad as the 
 world of men. 
 
 " Can we wonder that those who 
 crowded the table where he sat 
 lingered on till the daylight drove
 
 MUTUAL.ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 63 
 
 them from the board ? or that no 
 man who had had him for a boon 
 companion could ever be satisfied 
 with another ? Can we wonder that 
 the students who crowded his lecture- 
 room after he became a professor 
 thought every other lecturer common- 
 place and dull ? Not that he gave 
 them more information than others 
 perhaps he did not give them as 
 much ; but he excited and inspired 
 them. He quickened their minds, 
 and wakened their dormant faculties. 
 Some of the white-heat of his own 
 enthusiasm he communicated to their 
 colder natures, and they enjoyed the 
 unusual warmth."* 
 
 * It was this power of inspiring and quickening 
 that was so noticeable in Emerson's public utter- 
 ances. James Russell Lowell says : " Emerson 
 awakened us, saved us from the body of this 
 death. It is the sound of the trumpet that the 
 young soul longs for, careless what breath may fill 
 it. Sidney heard it in the ballad of Chevy Chase, 
 and we in Emerson. Nor did it blow retreat, but 
 called to us with assurance of victory. Did they 
 say he was disconnected ? So were the stars, that 
 seemed larger to our eyes, still keen with that ex-
 
 64 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 "Wilson and De Quincey had been 
 at Oxford together without acquaint- 
 ance at the time. Wilson left college 
 and settled at Elleray, by Lake Win- 
 dermere, happy in a vigorous health 
 and a fortune of thirty thousand 
 pounds ; but happier some years 
 later in the loss of the fortune ; for 
 it was that loss which brought his 
 
 citement, as we walked homeward with prouder 
 stride over the creaking snow. And were they not 
 knit together by a higher logic than our mere senses 
 could master ? Were we enthusiasts ? I hope and 
 believe we were, and am thankful to the man who 
 made us worth something for once in our lives. 
 If asked what was left ? what we carried home ? 
 we should not have been careful for an answer. 
 It would have been enough if we had said that 
 something beautiful had passed that way. Or we 
 might have asked in return what one brought 
 away from a symphony of Beethoven ? Enough 
 that he had set that ferment of wholesome dis- 
 content at work in us. There is one, at least, of 
 those old hearers so many of whom are now in 
 the fruition of that intellectual beauty of which 
 Emerson gave them both the desire and the fore- 
 taste who will always love to repeat : 
 
 " ' Che in la mente m' efitta, ed or m' accuora 
 La cara e buona immagine paterna 
 Di voi, quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora 
 M ' insegnavaste come F tiom s'eterna.' "
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 65 
 
 energies into full play. From 1809 
 Wilson, the tall, vigorous athlete, 
 with health in every movement of 
 his body and his mind, a man who 
 could jump twelve yards in three 
 jumps with a heavy stone in each 
 hand, became companion in rambles 
 with De Quincey, who was of under 
 height and slender of frame, with a 
 mind morbidly sensitive, not made 
 the healthier by use of opium. 
 The friendship between Thomas de 
 Quincey and John Wilson was life- 
 long. Each loved the poets, each 
 had his own touch of the sacred fire, 
 and the likeness in essentials was 
 accompanied with the complete un- 
 likeness in accidents of character that 
 fills one friend's life with ever-fresh 
 matter of study and enjoyment for 
 the other, and so doubles the ex- 
 perience of each."* 
 
 In the winter of 1814-15 De 
 
 * Henry Morley. 
 
 5
 
 66 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 Quincey was with his friend Wilson 
 in Edinburgh, where his silver stream 
 of talk charmed all who heard it. 
 " His voice," said one who met him 
 then, "was extraordinary; it came 
 as if from dreamland ; but it was 
 the most musical and impressive of 
 voices. Seeing he was always good- 
 natured and social, he could take 
 part in any sort of tattle ; but his 
 musical cadences were not in keep- 
 ing with such work, and in a few 
 minutes (not without some strictly 
 logical sequence) he could escape at 
 will from beeves to butterflies, and 
 thence to the soul's immortality, to 
 Plato and Kant and Schelling and 
 Fichte ; would recount profound 
 mysteries from his own experiences 
 visions that had come over him in 
 his loneliest walks among the moun- 
 tains. And whatever the subject 
 might be, every one of his sentences 
 was woven into the most logical
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 67 
 
 texture, and uttered in a tone of 
 sustained melody." 
 
 In his Personal Recollections of 
 Thomas de Quincey, John Ritchie 
 Findlay refers in an interesting man- 
 ner to a certain particular, in which 
 the subject of his little volume un- 
 deniably resembled Coleridge. " He 
 (De Quincey) had dined with me," 
 writes Mr. Findlay, " at George 
 Square ; he preferred an early hour, 
 and our small party had sat down to 
 dinner at five or six o'clock. The 
 two or three guests, all equally fasci- 
 nated and delighted with his talk 
 only my uncle (Mr. John Ritchie, 
 proprietor of the Scotsman; Mr. 
 Russel being its editor), Russel and 
 Burton probably had left us one by 
 one ; my uncle for the country, where 
 he was staying, I inhabiting alone 
 his house in town ; Burton uncere- 
 moniously enough when he thought 
 fit to go ; and at last Russel, about 
 
 52
 
 68 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 eleven o'clock, he having his work at 
 the Scotsman office for next morning's 
 paper, as I had also. After fully an 
 hour more had slipped away, I was 
 obliged to tell De Quincey that I 
 too must go. Then came elegant 
 apologies, undoubtedly sincere, and 
 we left together, my desire being to 
 see him safe home to his lodgings in 
 Lothian Street. No ; he would ac- 
 company me through the silent mid- 
 night streets that fine summer even- 
 ing. So we walked backwards and 
 forwards for probably another hour 
 between the High Street (where the 
 office of the Scotsman then was) and 
 Lothian Street, till at last the inevit- 
 able ' good-night ' was spoken. I got 
 to my post to find my work for the 
 night all but finished by Mr. Russel, 
 who immensely enjoyed the ' fix ' in 
 which he had left me, and was much 
 surprised at my having, by any device 
 or exercise of moral courage, got out
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 69 
 
 of it. As De Quincey said of Cole- 
 ridge, that the first difficulty was to 
 get him to begin to talk, and the 
 second to get him to stop, so of De 
 Quincey, the first difficulty was to 
 induce him to visit you, and the 
 second to reconcile him to leaving." 
 
 Here to the region of the lake-poets 
 came the young Emerson, on his first 
 visit to England. " On the 28th 
 August, 1833," he says, " I went to 
 Rydal Mount to pay my respects to 
 Mr. Wordsworth.* His daughters 
 
 * When Wordsworth first went to reside in the 
 district, it was a matter of necessity with him that 
 the rule of his household should be " plain living 
 and high thinking." What friends came to see 
 him were always welcome to the bread and cheese 
 of his table ; if they needed more or better well, 
 there was the village inn not far distant. Even 
 when his finances improved, the honest plainness 
 of his mode of living was apparent to all. We 
 are indebted to a communication by Mr. Jonathan 
 Bouchier to Notes and Queries for the following 
 story, which, in addition to being extremely 
 amusing in itself, illustrates the point to which we 
 have just referred : 
 
 "When Scott was staying with his friend and 
 brother-poet Wordsworth, the frugal fare at least 
 in the article of liquor at the bard of Rydal's
 
 70 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 called in their father, a plain, elderly, 
 white-haired man, not prepossessing, 
 and disfigured by green goggles. He 
 sat down, and talked with great 
 simplicity. ... I inquired if he had 
 read Carlyle's critical articles and 
 translations. He said he thought 
 him sometimes insane. He pro- 
 ceeded to abuse Goethe's Wilhelm 
 Meister heartily. He had never 
 gone farther than the first part ; 
 so disgusted was he that he threw 
 the book across the room. I de- 
 precated his wrath, and said what 
 I could for the better parts of the 
 book, and he courteously promised 
 
 table did not quite suit Scott's less simple palate. 
 He used, accordingly, to pay a visit to a neigh- 
 bouring ' public,' and have a quiet glass, ' unbe- 
 known,' as Mrs. Gamp would say, to Wordsworth. 
 One day the two poets were walking out together, 
 and they happened to pass the house, when 
 the landlady was standing at the door. Directly 
 she caught sight of Scott she exclaimed, to his 
 horror, ' Weel, Mr. Scott, have ye come for your 
 morning dram ?' thereby letting the cat out of the 
 bag, and covering Scott with confusion."
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 71 
 
 to look at it again. Carlyle, he 
 said, wrote most obscurely. He was 
 clever and deep, but he defied the 
 sympathies of everybody. Even Mr. 
 Coleridge wrote more clearly, though 
 he had always wished Coleridge 
 would write more to be understood. 
 He led me out into his garden, and 
 showed me the gravel walk in which 
 thousands of his lines were com- 
 posed. His eyes are very much in- 
 flamed. This is no loss except for 
 reading, because he never writes 
 prose, and of poetry he carries even 
 hundreds of lines in his head before 
 writing them. He had just returned 
 from a visit to Staffa, and within 
 three days he had made three 
 sonnets on Fingal's Cave, and was 
 composing a fourth when he was 
 called in to see me. He said : ' If 
 you are interested in my verses, 
 perhaps you will like to hear these 
 lines.' I gladly assented, and he re-
 
 72 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 collected himself for a few moments, 
 and then stood forth and repeated 
 one after the other the three entire 
 sonnets with great animation. I 
 fancied the second and third more 
 beautiful than his poems are wont to 
 be. The third is addressed to the 
 flowers, which, he said, especially 
 the ox-eye daisy, are very abundant 
 on the top of the rock ; the second 
 alludes to the name of the cave, 
 which is ' Cave of Music ;' the first 
 to the circumstance of its being 
 visited by the promiscuous company 
 of the steam-boat. 
 
 " This recitation was so unlocked 
 for and surprising he, the old 
 Wordsworth, standing apart, and 
 reciting to me in a garden-walk, like 
 a school-boy declaiming that I at 
 first was near to laugh ; but recol- 
 lecting myself that I had come thus 
 far to see a poet, and he was chant- 
 ing poems to me, I saw that he was
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 73 
 
 right and I was wrong, and gladly 
 gave myself up to hear. I told him 
 how much the few printed extracts 
 had quickened the desire to possess 
 his unpublished poems. He replied 
 he never was in haste to publish, 
 partly because he corrected a good 
 deal, and every alteration is ungra- 
 ciously received after printing; but 
 what he had written would be printed 
 whether he lived or died. I said 
 Tintern Abbey appeared to be the 
 favourite poem with the public, but 
 more contemplative readers preferred 
 the first books of the Excursion and 
 the Sonnets. He said, * Yes, they 
 are better.' He preferred such of 
 his poems as touched the affections 
 to any others ; for whatever is di- 
 dactic what theories of society, and 
 so on might perish quickly, but 
 whatever combined a truth with an 
 affection was KTrj/^a e? oet good to- 
 day and good for ever. He cited
 
 74 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 the sonnet, On the feelings of a high- 
 minded Spaniard, which he preferred 
 to any other (I so understood him), 
 and the Two Voices; and quoted, 
 with evident pleasure, the verses 
 addressed To the Skylark." 
 
 It is remarkable in how many 
 recorded interviews with the Rydal 
 bard we find mention of his starting 
 off with the recitation of his own 
 verses ; and it is curious to observe 
 how differently the fact impresses 
 his various hearers some receiving 
 the utterance reverently, others, and 
 these mostly brother poets, turning 
 restive under it as an infliction. 
 
 However one may admire Words- 
 worth, his egotism occasionally rubs 
 up very roughly against our sensi- 
 bilities. He told Lamb one day in 
 the course of conversation that he 
 considered Shakespeare greatly over- 
 rated. 
 
 " There is," said he, " an immen-
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 75 
 
 sity of trick in all Shakespeare wrote, 
 and people are taken by it. Now, if 
 / had a mind I could write exactly 
 like Shakespeare." 
 
 " Yes," stuttered Lamb in reply, 
 "it is only the mind that is want- 
 ing." 
 
 He once asked Mrs. Alaric Watts 
 what she thought the finest elegiac 
 composition in the English language, 
 and when she timidly suggested 
 Lycidas, he replied : 
 
 " You are not far wrong. It may, 
 I think, be affirmed that Milton's 
 Lycidas and my Laodamia are twin 
 immortals." 
 
 How very different was Lamb's 
 expressed estimate of himself! Call- 
 ing on Wordsworth one day he 
 said : 
 
 " Mr. Wordsworth, allow me to 
 introduce to you my only admirer." 
 
 It was also a great pity that 
 Wordsworth was so very full of
 
 76 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 " shop " on all occasions. If he had 
 been a little more niggardly in pour- 
 ing out his productions before his 
 visitors, it would have been better 
 for his reputation. " Enough is as 
 good as a feast." Dumas knew the 
 happy mean, and although such a 
 charming story-teller saw when to 
 draw the rein. One evening at a 
 party his hostess so wearied him with 
 requests to exhibit his powers in this 
 direction that at last, unable to en- 
 dure it longer, he quietly said : 
 
 " Everyone to his trade, madam. 
 The gentleman who entered your 
 drawing-room just before me is a 
 distinguished artillery officer. Let 
 him bring a cannon here and fire 
 it, then I will tell one of my little 
 stories." 
 
 I wonder what Byron really did 
 think of Coleridge when, on the very 
 first occasion of their meeting, he 
 treated the noble bard to one of his
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 77 
 
 interminable monologues wherein he 
 ascended into the seventh heaven 
 upon the wings of theology and 
 metaphysics ! * 
 
 During his visit to England, 
 Emerson called on Coleridge at 
 Highgate, and they touched on 
 theological amongst other subjects. 
 I have no doubt his experience during 
 the interview was very similar to 
 Lamb's. One day Coleridge was 
 regretting that Lamb had never 
 heard him preach, whereupon Lamb 
 retorted by saying that he had never 
 heard him do anything else. 
 
 To Hazlitt, however, Coleridge's 
 words were a revelation. In his 
 essay on My first Acquaintance with 
 Poets, speaking of his early meeting 
 with Coleridge, he says : 
 
 * When Leigh Hunt, who was rather disgusted 
 with Coleridge for his conduct on this occasion, 
 related the story to Lamb, Lamb excused his 
 friend by saying : " Oh, it was only his fun : 
 there's an immense deal of quiet humour about 
 Coleridge !"
 
 78 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 11 As we passed along between Wem 
 and Shrewsbury ... a sound was 
 in my ears as of a siren's song; I 
 was stunned, startled with it as from 
 deep sleep, but I had no notion 
 that I should ever be able to express 
 my admiration to others in motley 
 imagery or quaint allusion till the 
 light of his genius shone into my 
 soul like the sun's ray glittering in 
 the puddles of the road. I was at 
 that time dumb, inarticulate, help- 
 less, like a worm by the wayside, 
 crushed, bleeding, lifeless ; but now, 
 bursting the deadly bands that bound 
 them, 
 
 " ' With Styx nine times round them,' 
 
 my ideas float on winged words, and 
 as they expand their plumes, catch 
 the golden light of other years. My 
 soul has indeed remained in its 
 original bondage, dark, obscure, with 
 longings infinite and unsatisfied; my 
 heart, shut up in the prison-house
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 79 
 
 of this rude clay, has never found, 
 nor will it ever find, a heart to speak 
 to ;* but that my understanding also 
 did not remain dumb and brutish, or 
 at length found a language to express 
 itself, I owe to Coleridge. 
 
 " It was in January of 1798 that I 
 rose one morning before daylight to 
 walk ten miles in the mud to hear 
 this celebrated person preach. Never, 
 
 * A rather comical commentary on these ex- 
 pressions is afforded by Hazlitt's conduct, later in 
 life, in the matter of the heroine of the Liber 
 Ainoris (Sarah Walker, the daughter of a lodging- 
 house keeper), for whom he conceived an extra- 
 vagant and altogether unreasonable pa>sion which 
 completely subdued his intellect. " He was, for a 
 time," says Barry Cornwall, " unable to think or 
 talk of anything else. He abandoned criticism 
 and books as idle matters ; and fatigued every 
 person whom he met by expressions of his love, 
 of her deceit, and of his own vehement disap- 
 pointment. This was when he lived in Southamp- 
 ton Buildings, Holborn. Upon one occasion I 
 know that he told the story of his attachment to 
 five different persons in the same day, and at each 
 time entered into minute details. ' I am a 
 
 cursed fool,' said he to me. ' I saw J going 
 
 into Will's Coffee-house yesterday morning ; he 
 spoke to me. I followed him into the house ; 
 and whilst he lunched, I told him the whole story.
 
 80 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 the longest day I have to live, shall I 
 have such another walk as this cold, 
 raw, comfortless one in the winter. 
 . . . When I got there, the organ 
 was playing the looth Psalm, and 
 when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose 
 and gave out his text, ' And He went 
 up into the mountain to pray, HIM- 
 SELF, ALONE.' .... And for myself, 
 I could not have been more delighted 
 if I had heard the music of the 
 spheres. Poetry and philosophy 
 
 Then,' (said he) ' I wandered into Regent's 
 
 Park, where I met one of M 's sons. I walked 
 
 with him some time, and on his using some civil 
 expression, by God ! sir, I told him the whole 
 story.' [Here he mentioned another instance, 
 which I forget.] 'Well, sir' (he went on), 'I 
 then went and called on Haydon ; but he was 
 out. There was only his man, Salmon, there ; 
 but, by God ! I could not help myself. It all 
 came out the whole cursed story ! Afterwards 
 I went to look at some lodgings at Pimlico. The 
 landlady at one place, after some explanations as 
 to rent, etc., said to me very kindly, " I am afraid 
 you are not well, sir ?" " No, ma'am," said I, 
 " T am not well ;" and on inquiring further, the 
 devil take me if I did not let out the whole story, 
 from beginning to end !' "
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 8l 
 
 had met together. Truth and 
 genius had embraced under the 
 eye and with the sanction of re- 
 ligion. This was even beyond my 
 hopes. I returned home well satis- 
 fied. The sun that was still labour- 
 ing pale and wan through the sky, 
 obscured by thick mists, seemed an 
 emblem of the good cause; and the 
 cold dank drops of dew, that hung 
 half melted on the beard of the 
 thistle, had something genial and 
 refreshing in them ; for there was 
 a spirit of hope and youth in all 
 nature, that turned everything into 
 good. The face of nature had not 
 then the brand of Jus DIVINUM 
 on it : 
 
 " 'Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.' 
 
 " On the Tuesday following, the 
 half-inspired speaker came. I was 
 called down into the room where 
 he was, and went half hoping, 
 
 6
 
 82 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 half afraid. He received me very 
 graciously, and I listened for a long 
 time without uttering a word. I 
 did not suffer in his opinion by my 
 silence. ' For those two hours,' he 
 afterwards was pleased to say, 'he 
 was conversing with William Hazlitt's 
 forehead.' "* 
 
 Then there was that notable group 
 which once gathered around the 
 A tlantic Monthly ! Longfellowf and 
 
 * Madame de Stael, when once asked for her 
 estimate of Coleridge, said : " He is great in 
 monologue, but he has no idea of dialogue." 
 
 f On the publication of Longfellow's Hiawatha, 
 the Boston Daily traveller issued an adverse 
 criticism of it, in which appeared the following : 
 " His poem does not awaken one sympathetic 
 throb ; it does not teach a single truth ; and 
 rendered into prose, Hiawatha would be a mass 
 of the most childish nonsense that ever dropped 
 from human pen. In verse it contains nothing so 
 precious as the golden time which would be lost 
 in the reading of it." 
 
 Hereupon Messrs. Ticknor and Fields (Long- 
 fellow's publishers) wrote to the Traveller, with- 
 drawing their advertisements, and asking to have 
 the paper stopped ; which had for a response the 
 publication, in its completeness, of the missive, 
 together with a sweet little commentary directly
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 83 
 
 Emerson ; Whittier and Whipple ; 
 Holmes and Lowell, and Agassiz 
 " all the beaux esprits of the Atlantic 
 Monthly, in a word ; with an appro- 
 priate Corypheus in the person of 
 Mr. James T. Fields, himself a ripe 
 scholar, a poet of no mean order, 
 and a ' funny fellow ' to boot ; for 
 
 charging the publishers with endeavouring to use 
 all sorts of undue influence, etc. 
 
 " This," says F. H. Underwood, in his Bio- 
 graphical Sketch of Longfellow, " created no small 
 stir and as the poem at the same time was at- 
 tacked on other grounds, the newspapers, from the 
 Atlantic to the Mississippi, were soon engaged in 
 a general controversy. Through all this storm 
 Longfellow remained calm, paying no attention to 
 assailants or defenders. It is said that Fields one 
 day hurried off to Cambridge in a state of great 
 excitement, that morning's mail having brought 
 an unusually large batch of attacks and parodies, 
 some of the charges being, he considered, of a 
 seriously damaging character. ' My dear Mr. 
 Longfellow,' he exclaimed, bursting into the poet's 
 study, ' these atrocious libels must be stopped.' 
 Longfellow glanced over the papers without com- 
 ment. Handing them back, he quietly asked, 
 1 By the way, Fields, how is Hiawatha selling ?' 
 1 Wonderfully !' replied the excited publisher ; 
 ' none of your books has ever had such a sale. ' 
 'Then,' said the poet calmly, ' / think we had 
 better let these people go on advertising it.' " 
 
 62
 
 84 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 he possessed a rich collection of 
 New England witticisms and Yankee 
 drolleries."* " Lowell and Holmes 
 were the wits par excellence, though 
 Judge Hoar did not fall far behind. 
 Emerson sat always with a seraphic 
 smile upon his face, and Longfellow 
 thoroughly enjoyed every good sally, 
 though not adding to the mirth- 
 making himself."t 
 
 "Emerson was a member of the 
 Saturday Club from the first in 
 reality before it existed as an em- 
 pirical fact, and when it was only a 
 platonic idea. The Club seems to 
 have shaped itself around him as a 
 nucleus of crystallization, two or 
 three friends of his having first 
 formed the habit of meeting him at 
 dinner at 'Parker's,' the 'Will's 
 Coffee-house ' of Boston. This little 
 group gathered others to itself and 
 grew into a club, as Rome grew 
 
 * G. A. Sala. t H. T. Griswold.
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 85 
 
 into a city, almost without knowing 
 how. During its first decade the 
 Saturday Club brought together, as 
 members or as visitors, many distin- 
 guished persons. At one end of the 
 table sat Longfellow, florid, quiet, 
 benignant, soft-voiced a most agree- 
 able rather than a brilliant talker, 
 but a man upon whom it was always 
 pleasant to look whose silence was 
 better than many another man's con- 
 versation. At the other end of the 
 table sat Agassiz, robust, sanguine, 
 animated, full of talk, boy-like in his 
 laughter. The stranger who should 
 have asked who were the men ranged 
 along the sides of the table would 
 have heard in answer the names of 
 Hawthorne,* Motley, Dana, Lowell, 
 
 * " It was only in the company of intimate per- 
 sonal friends, from whom all restraint was removed, 
 that Hawthorne ever indulged in his natural buoy- 
 ancy of spirits. Among them he occasionally 
 condescended to uproarious fun. But he was like 
 Dr. Johnson, who, when indulging in a scene of 
 wild hilarity, suddenly exclaimed to his friends,
 
 86 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 Whipple ; Peirce, the distinguished 
 mathematician; Judge Hoar, eminent 
 at the Bar and in the Cabinet ; Dwight, 
 the leading musical critic of Boston 
 for a whole generation ; Sumner, the 
 academic champion of freedom ; 
 Andrew, ' the great War Governor ' 
 of Massachusetts ; Dr. Howe, the 
 philanthropist; William Hunt, the 
 painter, with others not unworthy 
 of such company. And with these, 
 generally near the Longfellow end of 
 the table, sat Emerson, talking in 
 low tones and carefully measured 
 utterances to his neighbour, or listen- 
 ing, and recording any stray word 
 worth remembering on his mental 
 phonograph. Emerson was a very 
 regular attendant at the meeting of 
 the Saturday Club, and continued to 
 
 as Beau Brummel approached, ' Let us be 
 grave ; here comes a fool !' If there was the 
 slightest suspicion of the presence of a fool in the 
 company, Hawthorne always wore his armour."
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 87 
 
 dine at its table until within a year 
 or two of his death." 
 
 This is Oliver Wendell Holmes' 
 account, which he concludes by 
 saying : " Unfortunately the Club 
 had no Boswell, and its golden hours 
 passed unrecorded."* And so we 
 are driven back upon our old habit 
 of availing ourselves of (to use the 
 Autocrat's own words) "that blessed 
 clairvoyance which sees into things 
 without opening them that glorious 
 license, which, having shut the door 
 and driven the reporter from its 
 keyhole, calls upon Truth, majestic 
 
 * Once the Club dinner was given at Porter's 
 hotel, " about a mile due north of the college in 
 Cambridge ;" and it was on this occasion that 
 Longfellow, having just read Holmes' new truth 
 that authors were like cats, sure to purr when 
 stroked the right way of the fur, replied to some 
 particular attention on the part of the Autocrat by 
 saying, with a merry twinkle in his eyes, " I purr, 
 I purr !" And then when the company broke up, 
 and went out into the darkness, they found that 
 during the evening a foot or more of snow had 
 fallen ; so with arms linked, and the younger 
 members singing Dr. Palmer's chorus Puttyrum t 
 they tramped back to Cambridge.
 
 88 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 virgin ! to get off from her pedestal 
 and drop her academic poses, and 
 take a festive garland, and the vacant 
 place on the medius lectus that 
 carnival-shower of questions and 
 replies and comments, large axioms 
 bowled over the mahogany like 
 bomb-shells from professional mor- 
 tars, and explosive wit dropping its 
 trains of many-coloured fire, and the 
 mischief rain of bon-bons pelting 
 everybody that shows himself." 
 
 But when a man undertakes to paint 
 his friends' portraits, he, too, must 
 be content to sit for his own ; so 
 the Holmes omitted by Holmes is 
 thus drawn by Dr. Appleton, who 
 met him at the same brilliant gather- 
 ing : " Dr. Holmes was highly talka- 
 tive and agreeable ; he converses 
 very much like the Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast Table wittily, and in a 
 literary way, but perhaps with too 
 great an infusion of physiological and
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 89 
 
 medical metaphor. He is a little 
 deaf, and has a mouth like the beak 
 of a bird ; indeed, he is, with his 
 small body and quick movements, 
 very like a bird in his general 
 aspect." 
 
 Occasionally, especially when in 
 the presence of brilliant talkers and 
 around the festive board, one is apt 
 to over-shoot the mark, and to utter 
 things which are afterwards severely 
 reckoned up as " better unsaid." 
 Mark Twain seems to have made a 
 mistake of this kind at the banquet 
 given to the contributors to the 
 Atlantic Monthly, in celebration of 
 Whittier's seventieth birthday. The 
 irrepressible author of The Jumping 
 Frog, was introduced by W. D. 
 Howells as one " who has, perhaps, 
 done more kindness to our race, 
 lifted from it more crushing care, 
 rescued it from more gloom, and 
 banished from it more wretchedness,
 
 90 MUTUAL- ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 than all the professional philan- 
 thropists that have lived ; a humourist 
 who never makes you blush to have 
 enjoyed his joke ; whose generous 
 wit has no bad meaning in it ; whose 
 fun is never at the cost of anything 
 honestly high or good, but comes from 
 the soundest of hearts and the clearest 
 of heads." 
 
 Imagine the astonishment of the 
 refined and cultivated assembly when, 
 immediately following this, Mark 
 Twain arose, and, as C. M. Barrows* 
 relates, gave an account of the 
 unseemly behaviour of the three 
 honoured poets Longfellow, Emer- 
 son, and Holmes in the log-cabin of 
 a California miner, about fifteen 
 years before the date of his speech. 
 As Clemens represented the case, he 
 himself, having reached this cabin at 
 nightfall, sought its hospitality, and 
 was very reluctantly admitted by the 
 
 * Acts and Anecdotes of Aiithors.
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 91 
 
 occupant, who informed him that 
 the three New England gentlemen 
 just named had spent the previous 
 night with him, that they were much 
 the worse for liquor, passed many 
 hours in card-playing and drinking 
 and quoting poetry, drew revolvers 
 and bowie-knives upon each other, 
 and, on departing, carried off the 
 miner's only pair of boots. 
 
 The joke was not very well received, 
 and Mr. Clemens wrote a note of 
 apology, in which he intimated, in 
 palliation of the case, that God made 
 him a fool, and he was simply acting 
 out his nature. 
 
 In this connection might be men- 
 tioned a dinner which took place at 
 the Parker House, Boston, during 
 Dickens' 1868 tour in the United 
 States, at which, amongst others, 
 "David Copperfield," "Hyperion," 
 "Hosea Biglow," the "Autocrat," 
 and the " Bad Boy " were present.
 
 92 MUTUAL. ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 One who lived through it to tell the 
 tale says : " We had no set speeches 
 at the table, for we had voted elo- 
 quence a bore before we sat down 
 . . . We had a great good time . . . 
 Dickens was in his best mood . . . 
 And we all declared, when we bade 
 him good night, that none of us had 
 ever enjoyed a festival more." 
 
 There are extremes, after all the 
 ridiculous and the sublime which do 
 not meet, as extremes sometimes do, 
 in this mutual - admiration matter. 
 Thoreau once said : " The stars and 
 I belong to a mutual-admiration 
 society;" and he undoubtedly felt 
 there was some hidden and supreme 
 wisdom in what he was saying. The 
 ridiculous was of a certainty present 
 when Madame de Stae'l and another 
 famous author met by special invita- 
 tion at a French country house, and 
 each brought a handsomely bound
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 93 
 
 book of her own to present to the 
 other. Both were profuse in their 
 flattery, both declared the other's 
 work would have a priceless value, to 
 be preserved by them with infinite 
 care. When they had made their 
 gushing adieus and departed, the 
 amused hostess found the respective 
 volumes carelessly left on table and 
 sofa. What a subject for the scathing 
 satire of some contemporary wit ! 
 At the time (long ago now, thank 
 Heaven !) of the " You scratch my 
 back, and I'll scratch yours " (was it 
 log-rolling ?), which was carried on 
 in an extremely ridiculous manner 
 between Hayley and Anna Seward, 
 some rhymester penned this sweet 
 dialogue between the interesting 
 parties : 
 
 " ' Tuneful poet ! Britain's giory, 
 
 Mr. Hayley, that is you ' 
 
 ' Ma'am, you carry all before you, 
 
 Trust me, Lichfield Swan, you do '
 
 94 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 
 
 "'Ode, didactick, epick, sonnet, 
 
 Mr. Hayley, you're divine ' 
 
 ' Ma'am, I'll take my oath upon it, 
 You alone are all the Nine !' " 
 
 The cure of such flattery and hum- 
 bug is sometimes brought about in a 
 rather decided, if harsh, manner. 
 Occasionally a man is found gifted 
 with an unenviable desire to tell 
 the truth at all times, in season 
 and out ; and the awakening is gene- 
 rally brought about by his means. I 
 wonder what degree of positive hatred 
 Sterne felt towards Garrick after the 
 following delightful little conversa- 
 tion between them ! Sterne used his 
 wife very ill. One day he was talking 
 to Garrick in a fine sentimental 
 manner in praise of conjugal love and 
 fidelity. 
 
 " The husband," said Sterne, " who 
 behaves unkindly to his wife deserves 
 to have his house burned over his 
 head."
 
 MUTUAL-ADMIRATION SOCIETIES. 95 
 
 Garrick's rejoinder was simply: 
 " If you think so, I hope your house 
 
 is insured." 
 
 " For it must needs be that offences 
 
 come ; but woe to that man by whom 
 
 the offence cometh !"
 
 IV. 
 
 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY; 
 
 AND THE DEBATABLE LAND 
 
 BETWEEN. 
 
 "But -when an eager listener, stealing behind 
 Irving and Halleck at an evening party, found 
 
 them talking of shoe-leather ! and a breathless 
 
 devotee of Thackeray, sitting opposite to hint at the 
 dinner-table, saw those Delphian lips unclosed only 
 to utter the words, ' Another potato, if you please !' 
 they had revelations which might cast a dreadful 
 suspicion over the nature of the -whole tribe of 
 authors. 
 
 " 7 would not have the reader imagine that the 
 members of the Echo Club are represented by either of 
 these extremes. They are authors, of different ages 
 and very unequal places in public estimation. It 
 would never occur to them to seat themselves on self- 
 constructed pyramids, and speak as if The Ages were 
 listening ; yet, like their brethren of all lands and 
 all times, the staple of their talk is literature" 
 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 THE hunger of a great and self- 
 sufficing mind for the charms of re-
 
 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY. 97 
 
 tirement is sometimes pathetic in the 
 extreme. We do not refer here to 
 that romantic longing of poetic boy- 
 hood, such as we find expressed 
 by Kirke White in one of his 
 sonnets : 
 
 " Give me a cottage on some Cambrian wild, 
 
 Where, far from cities, I may spend my days : 
 And by the beauties of the scene beguiled, 
 
 May pity man's pursuits, and shun his ways. 
 While on the rock I mark the browsing goat, 
 
 List to the mountain torrent's distant noise, 
 Or the hoarse bittern's solitary note, 
 
 I shall not want the world's delusive joys ; 
 But, with my little scrip, my book, my lyre, 
 
 Shall think my lot complete, nor covet more ; 
 And when with time shall wane the vital fire, 
 
 I'll raise my pillow on the desert shore, 
 And lay me down to rest where the wild wave 
 Shall make sweet music o'er my lonely grave." 
 
 This is all, without doubt, very 
 pretty and extremely touching ; but 
 is it healthy ? Although Keats was 
 mawkish after a manner, his criticism 
 of life was sometimes remarkably 
 true, if not very severe. " The imagi- 
 nation of a boy," he writes in his 
 preface to Endymion, " is healthy, 
 
 7
 
 98 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY; AND 
 
 and the mature imagination of a man 
 is healthy ; but there is a space of life 
 between in which the soul is in a 
 ferment, the character undecided, 
 the way of life uncertain, the ambi- 
 tion thick-sighted : thence proceeds 
 mawkishness and all the thousand 
 bitters." 
 
 The reality which dogs the foot- 
 steps of excessive and too far-reach- 
 ing fancy is sometimes as utterly 
 cruel and ridiculous as that we 
 find pictured in a certain Sequel 
 to Rogers' little poem, The Wish, 
 which, in a frolicsome moment, some 
 sportive brain caused to dance into 
 existence,* and which is so complete 
 in its way that we are constrained to 
 give it here : 
 
 THE WISH. (By Rogers.) 
 
 " Mine be a cot beside a hill, 
 
 A beehive's hum shall soothe my ear ; 
 A willowy brook that turns the mill 
 With many a fall shall linger there. 
 
 * See Athenceum, April 14, 1888.
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 99 
 
 " The swallow oft beneath the thatch 
 
 Shall twitter from her clay-built nest ; 
 Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch 
 
 And share my meals, a welcome guest. 
 "Around the ivied porch shall stray 
 
 Each fragrant flower that sips the dew, 
 And Lucy at her wheel shall sing 
 In russet gown and apron blue. 
 
 " The village church among the trees, 
 
 Where first our marriage vows were given, 
 With merry peals shall swell the breeze, 
 And point with taper spire to heaven." 
 
 THE WISH ENJOYED. (The Sequel.) 
 
 " So damp my cot beside the hill 
 
 The bees have ceased to soothe my ear ; 
 The willowy brook that turns the mill 
 Is turned to please the miller near. 
 
 ' ' The swallow housed beneath the thatch 
 
 Bedaubs my window from her nest ; 
 Instead of pilgrims at my latch, 
 Beggars and thieves disturb my rest. 
 
 " From out the ivy at my door 
 
 Earwigs and snails are always crawling ; 
 Lucy now spins and sings no more, 
 Because the hungry brats are squalling. 
 
 ' ' To village church with priestly pride 
 
 In vain the pointing spire is given ; 
 Lucy with Wesley for her guide 
 Has found a shorter road to heaven." 
 
 The shallow sentiment of seclusion 
 is very different to the knowledge on 
 the part of great thinkers of the ab- 
 
 72
 
 loo SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY; AND 
 
 solute worth of solitude and rest as 
 aids to their life-work. There is 
 nothing, for instance, of " life's 
 young dream " about the utterances 
 of Carlyle on this subject, which we 
 find in his correspondence with 
 Emerson. " Pain and poverty," he 
 writes, " are not wholesome ; but 
 praise and flattery along with them 
 are poison. God deliver us from 
 that ; it carries madness in the very 
 breath of it ! On the whole, I say 
 to myself, what thing is there so good 
 as rest ?" And again : " The velo- 
 city of all things, of the very word 
 you hear on the streets, is at railway 
 rate ; joy itself is unenjoyable, to be 
 avoided like pain ; there is no wish 
 one has so pressing as for quiet. Ah 
 me ! I often swear I will be buried 
 at least in free breezy Scotland, out 
 of this insane hubbub, where Fate 
 tethers me in life." " Solitude," he 
 continues in another letter, " is what
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 101 
 
 I long and pray for. In the babble 
 of men my own soul goes all to 
 babble. . . . My trust in Heaven 
 is, I shall yet get away ' to some 
 cottage by the seashore;' far enough 
 from all the mad and mad-making 
 things that dance round me here, 
 which I shall then look on only as 
 a theatrical phantasmagory, with an 
 eye only to the meaning that lies 
 hidden in it." " A thinker, I take it, 
 in the long-run " (Carlyle again to 
 Emerson) " finds that essentially he 
 must ever be and continue alone 
 alone : 'silent, rest over him the stars, 
 and under him the graves !' The 
 clatter of the world, be it a friendly, 
 be it a hostile world, shall not inter- 
 meddle with him much." 
 
 And yet a man of genius, with 
 sensitive and passionate heart and 
 powerful imagination (and the pos- 
 session of these gifts is one of the 
 hall-marks of genius), cannot find
 
 102 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 rest in solitude if he be divorced 
 thereby from his work. The value of 
 solitude to him is that of conditions : 
 unfavourable interruptions are pre- 
 vented, and his brain-throb goes on 
 healthily and with immediate satis- 
 faction to himself and ultimate satis- 
 faction to the world if he have it for 
 an audience as a man of superior 
 parts should. 
 
 I know of no more charming pic- 
 ture than that of the quiet life of 
 Hawthorne at the Old Manse in 
 Concord, where restful days hemmed 
 him round, and where solitude gave 
 him ample opportunities for literary 
 work. And when a chance friend 
 came to break in upon his seclusion, 
 what a friend that would be ! Emer- 
 son* or Thoreau, or, to use Haw- 
 
 * "Mr. Emerson delights in him," said Mrs. 
 Hawthorne ; "he talks to him all the time, and 
 Mr. Hawthorne looks answers. He seems to 
 fascinate Emerson. Whenever he comes to see him 
 he takes him away, so that no one may interrupt 
 him in his close and dead-set attack upon his ear."
 
 THE DEB AT ABLE LAND BETWEEN. 103 
 
 thorne's own words, "it might be 
 that Ellery Channing came up the 
 avenue to join me in a fishing excur- 
 sion on the river. Strange and happy 
 times were those, when we cast aside 
 all irksome forms and strait-laced 
 habitudes, and delivered ourselves up 
 to the free air, to live like the Indians 
 or any less conventional race during 
 one bright semicircle of the sun."* 
 
 * A true disciple of Emerson, or rather, perhaps, 
 a sharer of some of his thoughts, Hawthorne 
 saw with him that many a so-called calamity 
 "commonly operates revolutions in our way of 
 life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth 
 which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted 
 occupation, or a household, or style of living, and 
 allows the formation of new ones more friendly to 
 the growth of character . . . permits or constrains 
 the formation of new acquaintances, and the re- 
 ception of new influences that prove of the first 
 importance to the next years ; and the man or 
 woman who would have remained a sunny garden 
 flower, with no room for its roots and too much 
 sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls 
 and the neglect of the gardener, is made the 
 banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to 
 wide neighbourhoods of men." And seeing this, 
 he thus wrote with reference to his appointment as 
 Surveyor of the Port of Salem : "I took it in 
 good part, at the hands of Providence, that I was
 
 J0 4 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 ]. T. Fields, in his Yesterdays with 
 Authors, gives a very interesting 
 account of a conversation with Haw- 
 thorne, which certainly cannot fail 
 
 thrown into a position so little akin to my past 
 habits, and set myself seriously to gather whatever 
 profit was at hand. After my fellowship of toil 
 and impracticable schemes with the dreamy 
 brethren at Brook Farm ; after living for three 
 years within the subtle influence of an intellect 
 like Emerson's ; after those wild, free days on the 
 Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside 
 our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing ; 
 after talking with Thoreau about pine-trees and 
 Indian relics, in his hermitage at Walden ; after 
 growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic 
 refinement of Hillard's culture ; after becoming 
 imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow's 
 hearth-stone, it was time, at length, that I should 
 exercise other functions of my nature, and nourish 
 myself with food for which I had hitherto had 
 little appetite. Even the old inspector was de- 
 sirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had 
 known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, 
 in some measure, of a system naturally well 
 balanced, and lacking no essential part of a 
 thorough organization, that with such associates 
 to remember, I could mingle at once with men of 
 altogether different qualities, and never murmur 
 at the change." 
 
 And it was Mrs. Hawthorne's perception of the 
 truth underlying the statement that " the changes 
 which break up at short intervals the prosperity of
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 105 
 
 to interest all who delight to know 
 of the personality of the author of 
 The Scarlet Letter. "As the sunset 
 deepened and we sat together," 
 writes Fields, " Hawthorne began to 
 talk in an autobiographical vein, and 
 gave us the story of his early life. 
 ... He said at an early age he 
 accompanied his mother and sister 
 to the township in Maine which his 
 grandfather had purchased. That, 
 he continued, was the happiest period 
 of his life, and it lasted through 
 several years, when he was sent to 
 school in Salem. ' I lived in Maine,' 
 he said, ' like a bird of the air, so per- 
 fect was the freedom I enjoyed. But 
 
 men are advertisements of a nature whose law is 
 growth," which prompted her, when her husband 
 brought her the news of his discharge from the 
 Custom House, to exclaim : " Oh, then you can now 
 write your book." Hawthorne had been bemoan- 
 ing himself, for some time back, at not having 
 leisure to write down a story that had long been 
 weighing on his mind the story which ultimately 
 took shape as The Scarlet Letter.
 
 106 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 it was there I first got my cursed 
 habits of solitude.'* During the 
 moonlight nights of winter he would 
 skate until midnight all alone upon 
 Sebago Lake, with the deep shadows 
 of the icy hills on either hand. When 
 he found himself far away from his 
 home, and weary with the exertion 
 of skating, he would sometimes take 
 
 * " The self-contained purpose of Hawthorne, " 
 writes Higginson in one of his Short Studies of 
 American Authors, " the large resources, the 
 waiting power these seem to the imagination to 
 imply an ample basis of physical life ; and certainly 
 his stately and noble port is inseparable, in my 
 memory, from these characteristics. Vivid as this 
 impression is, I yet saw him but twice, and never 
 spoke to him. I first met him on a summer morn- 
 ing, in Concord, as he was walking along the road 
 near the Old Manse, with his wife by his side, and 
 a noble-looking baby-boy in a little waggon which 
 the father was pushing. I remember him as tall, 
 firm, and strong in bearing ; . . . when I passed, 
 Hawthorne lifted upon me his great gray eyes, 
 with a look too keen to seem indifferent, too shy 
 to be sympathetic and that was all. . . . Again, 
 I met Hawthorne at one of the sessions of a short- 
 lived literary club ; and I recall the imperturbable 
 dignity and patience with which he sat through a 
 vexatious discussion, whose details seemed as much 
 dwarfed by his presence as if he had been a statue 
 of Olympian Zeus."
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 107 
 
 refuge in a log-cabin, where half a 
 tree would be burning on the broad 
 hearth. He would sit in the ample 
 chimney, and look at the stars 
 through the great aperture up 
 which the flames went roaring. 
 ' Ah,' he said, ' how well I recall the 
 summer-days also, when, with my 
 gun, I roamed at will through the 
 woods of Maine. How sad middle- 
 life looks to people of erratic tem- 
 peraments ! Everything is beautiful 
 in youth, for all things are allowed to 
 it then.' " 
 
 Francis Jeffrey's love of the seclu- 
 sion of his home was intense, especi- 
 ally in his later years. Whatever 
 successes attended him in public life, 
 immediately the excitement was at 
 an end his heart turned to his " old 
 familiar friends," his quiet house and 
 his literary occupations. And so in 
 like manner with Washington Irving. 
 In one of his letters he writes :
 
 108 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 " Amidst all the splendours of 
 London and Paris, I find my imagi- 
 nation refuses to take fire, and my 
 heart still yearns after dear little 
 Sunnyside." 
 
 And in another : 
 
 " I long to be back once more at 
 dear little Sunnyside, while I have 
 yet strength and good spirits to 
 enjoy the simple pleasures of the 
 country, and to rally a happy family 
 group once more around me. I 
 grudge every year of absence that 
 rolls by. To-morrow I shall be 
 sixty-two years old. The evening 
 of life is fast drawing over me ; still 
 I hope to get back among my friends 
 while there is a little sunshine left." 
 
 Sometimes congenial friends in- 
 vade the solitude, and the heart 
 grows light. And what conversa- 
 tions, forsooth, take place ! Think 
 of the right joyous times when Ben 
 Jonson and Drayton used to visit
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 109 
 
 a certain William Shakespeare at 
 Stratford-on-Avon, and were hospit- 
 ably entertained by the writer of 
 plays. And if it be true that Shake- 
 speare's death was the result of a too 
 convivial reception given by him to 
 these two friends well, we regret 
 heartily that no record of the bright 
 sayings that must have leaped from 
 lip to ear on that occasion has been 
 preserved. We refuse to think that 
 their talk even in their cups was as 
 the talk of other men.* 
 
 The anonymous author of a seven- 
 teenth century poem, A Preparative 
 
 * Shakespeare and Ben Jonson seem to have 
 been well matched in controversy. In his Worthies 
 of Englatid, Fuller says : " Many were the wit- 
 combats between him (Shakespeare) and lien 
 Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great 
 galleon and an English man-of-war ; Master 
 Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in 
 learning ; solid, but slow, in his performances. 
 Shakespeare, like the English mati-of-war, lesser 
 in bulk, but higher in sailing, could turn with all 
 tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds 
 by the quickness of his wit and invention."
 
 1 10 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY; AND 
 
 to Studie; or the Virtue of Sack, begins 
 it thus : 
 
 " Fetch me Ben Jonson's Scull and fil't with sack 
 Rich as the same he drank, when the whole 
 
 Of jolly Sisters pleg'd and did agree 
 It was no sinne to a be as druk as hee ;" 
 
 and Herrick writes : 
 
 " Ah, Ben ! 
 Say how or when 
 
 Shall we thy guests 
 Meet at those lyric feasts 
 
 Made at the Sun, 
 The Dog, the Triple Tun ? 
 
 Where we such clusters had 
 As made us nobly wild, not mad ; 
 
 And yet each verse of thine 
 Outdid the meal, outdid the frolic wine." 
 
 But 'tis to the Mermaid Tavern, where 
 Shakespeare and Raleigh and the re- 
 markable men of their day met to 
 " exercise their wit," that all who 
 love the poets delight to turn. Keats 
 queried in song : 
 
 " Souls of Poets'dead and gone, 
 What Elysium .have ye known, 
 Happy field or mossy cavern, 
 Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ?"
 
 THE DEB A TABLE LAND BET WEEN. 1 1 1 
 
 But long before Keats no other than 
 Master Francis Beaumont had writ- 
 ten to Jonson : 
 
 " What things have we seen 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, 
 As if that everyone from whence they came 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
 And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
 Of his dull life." 
 
 It has been said that Jonson wrote 
 best when " in his cups ;"* and we 
 are half inclined to fancy that some 
 trifle of truth lurks in the statement. 
 Here are his own confessions : " Upon 
 the 2Oth of May, the king (Heaven 
 reward him !) sent me 100. At that 
 time I often went to the Devil Tavern ; 
 and before I had spent 40 of it, 
 wrote my A Ichymist. I laid the plot 
 of my Volpone, and wrote most of it 
 after a present of ten dozen of Palm- 
 sack from my good Lord T ." 
 
 And again : "The first speech in my 
 
 * He was so immoderately fond of canary that 
 his friends used to call him the Canary-Bird.
 
 H2 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 Cattilina, spoken by Scylla's ghost, 
 was writ after I had parted with my 
 friend at the Devil Tavern : I had 
 drunk well that night, and had brave 
 notions. There is one scene in that 
 play which I think flat. I resolve to 
 drink no more water in my wine." 
 Was the wine the only source of his 
 inspiration ? or was it not rather 
 aided by the brilliant companionship 
 of the frequenters of the tavern who, 
 coming thither, considered them- 
 selves " sealed of the tribe of Ben"? 
 And who would not if he could 
 have listened to the notable conver- 
 sations which took place at Haw- 
 thornden in January, 1619, betwixt 
 Ben Jonson and William Drum- 
 mond ?* What has been written 
 concerning the revelation of cha- 
 racter which must have been dis- 
 
 * "Then will I dress once more thy faded bower, 
 Where Jonson sat in Drummond's classic 
 shade." Collins.
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LA ND BET WEEN. 1 1 3 
 
 played at this time by both of the 
 talkers is interesting in its way, and 
 on no account whatever to be cast 
 lightly aside. Drummond was un- 
 doubtedly eager to hear, and full of 
 talk about poets, who, like himself, 
 were writers of sonnets, madrigals, 
 and courtly compliments : Jonson, 
 arrogant and boasting, yet withal of 
 a warm heart and a kindly disposi- 
 tion, leaned more towards gay and 
 high-born personages, for whom his 
 Court Masques were written. And 
 what entertainment fit for the gods 
 there must have been in their allusions 
 to, and estimates of, such men as 
 Raleigh, Sidney, Bacon, Selden, 
 Fletcher, Beaumont, Spenser, and, 
 above all, Shakespeare, concerning 
 whom Jonson wrote : " I loved the 
 man, and do honour his memory (on 
 this side idolatry) as much as any !" 
 
 The learning, judgment, love of 
 anecdote, extensive acquaintance
 
 114 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 with poets, statesmen, and eminent 
 characters brought into display in 
 these talks must have rendered them 
 enjoyable beyond compare. And 
 before the blazing fire at Hawthorn- 
 den, no doubt Jonson related to his 
 host all the particulars of the convi- 
 vial reception afforded to Drayton 
 and himself by Shakespeare at his 
 Stratford home just three years be- 
 fore. 
 
 It is ever to be lamented that 
 Jonson's account of his journey to 
 Scotland should have been destroyed 
 in the fire which consumed a great 
 quantity of his papers (probably in 
 1629), an d that from Drummond 
 we have to take all that we can know 
 about their quiet evenings. Not that 
 we believe Drummond to have been 
 insincere ; but what a " labour of 
 love " it would be to compare the 
 records of the same conversations 
 from the pens of the two talkers !
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 115 
 
 Gifford says that at these times 
 Jonson " wore his heart upon his 
 sleeve for daws to peck at it." Per- 
 haps we should find, were Jonson's 
 account get-at-able, that Drummond 
 also did the same ; and no interview 
 between literary friends is worth a 
 spider's egg unless it be accompanied 
 by this wearing of the exposed heart. 
 The evil all comes out in the sub- 
 sequent injudicious tittle-tattle by 
 either of the parties.* 
 
 Pope, in one of his conversations 
 with Spence, told him that Cowley's 
 death was brought about in the fol- 
 lowing manner : His friend, Dean 
 Sprat, was with him on a visit, and 
 " they had been together to see a 
 neighbour of Cowley's, who, accord- 
 ing to the fashion of those times, 
 made them too welcome. They did 
 not set out for their walk home till it 
 
 * See Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations with 
 William Drummond of Hawthornden, issued by 
 the Shakespeare Society, 1842. 
 
 82
 
 n6 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 was late ; and they had drunk so deep 
 that they lay in the fields all night, 
 which proceeding gave Cowley the 
 fever that carried him off." And this 
 was the Cowley who revelled in his re- 
 tirement from the busy scenes of the 
 world ; who had foregone all public 
 employments to follow the inclina- 
 tions of his own mind, " which in 
 the greatest throng of his former 
 business had still called upon him 
 and represented to him the true de- 
 lights of solitary studies, of tem- 
 perate pleasures, and of a moderate 
 revenue, below the malice and 
 flatteries of fortune." All students 
 of literature know his poem, The 
 Wish : 
 
 ' ' Well, then, I now do plainly see 
 
 This busy world and I shall ne'er agree ; 
 The very honey of all earthly joy 
 Does of all meats the soonest cloy. 
 
 And they methinks deserve my pity, 
 Who for it can endure the stings, 
 The crowd and buzz and murmurings 
 
 Of this great hive, the city.
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 117 
 
 " Ah ! yet ere I descend to th' grave, 
 May I a small house and large garden hare, 
 And a few friends, and many books." 
 
 Well, he had his wish so far ; and 
 his death came about, not through 
 his " many books," but through his 
 " few friends." 
 
 Alas ! Burns' " few friends " had 
 to do with his end too. The tale is 
 thus recorded by Chambers : "Early 
 in the month of January, when his 
 health was in the course of improve- 
 ment, Burns tarried to a late hour at 
 a jovial party in the Globe Tavern. 
 Before returning home, he unluckily 
 remained for some time in the open 
 air, and, overpowered by the effects 
 of the liquor he had drunk, fell 
 asleep." A fatal chill resulted, and 
 when he reached his house the seeds 
 of rheumatic fever had already taken 
 possession of him. 
 
 Perhaps one of the best stories 
 about Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd,
 
 Il8 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 is that related by Lockhart. The 
 Shepherd was invited by Walter 
 Scott to dinner, and he accordingly 
 came dressed precisely as an ordi- 
 nary herdsman attending cattle to 
 the market. Mrs. Scott, at that 
 time being in a delicate state of 
 health, was reclining on a sofa. The 
 Shepherd, after being presented and 
 making his best bow, forthwith took 
 possession of another sofa placed 
 opposite hers, and immediately 
 stretched himself thereupon at all 
 his length, giving afterwards as his 
 reason, whilst relating the occur- 
 rence, that he thought he could not 
 do wrong in copying the lady of the 
 house. His dirty shoes and greasy 
 hands smeared the chintz ; but his 
 ignorance was the hedge which 
 fenced in his bliss, and he saw 
 nothing wrong in it. He dined 
 heartily and drank freely. He jested, 
 sang, and told stories. Soon the
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 119 
 
 wine operated, and threw back the 
 flood-gates of his vulgarity. From 
 " Mr. Scott " he got to " Sherra," 
 from " Sherra " to " Scott," from 
 "Scott "to "Walter," from "Walter" 
 to " Wattie," and finished by calling 
 Mrs. Scott " Charlotte," which "fairly 
 convulsed the whole party." 
 
 But with it all the Ettrick Shep- 
 herd had a good heart at bottom, 
 and his natural feelings found play 
 and proper exercise in his inter- 
 course with men of his own position 
 in life.* His whole soul went out 
 towards his brother in verse, the 
 unfortunate Tannahill, who com- 
 mitted suicide, by drowning, in his 
 
 * " Hogg, talking of him as the man, not the 
 poet, was out of his element in society. ... At 
 home, within his family circle, the Ettrick Shep- 
 herd was a different being ; he had the feelings of 
 the husband, the father, and the Christian, and 
 was, besides, without measure, benevolent and 
 hospitable full of those charities which commend 
 themselves to the heart." Angling Reminis- 
 fences of the Rivers and Lochs of Scot/am/, by 
 T. D. Stoddart.
 
 120 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 thirty-sixth year, having fallen into a 
 state of mental derangement result- 
 ing from habitual morbid despon- 
 dency. " Farewell," said Tannahill, 
 as he grasped his hand a little while 
 before his death ; "we shall never 
 meet again !" 
 
 Many remarkable meetings must 
 have taken place at one time at the 
 Southampton Coffee-house in Chan- 
 cery Lane ; for here Barry Cornwall, 
 Martin Burney, Mudford (editor of 
 the Courier), Hazlitt, Charles Wells 
 (author of Joseph and his Brethren),* 
 and Mouncey, among others, used to 
 congregate. There certainly must 
 
 * The interest in Wells' work has lately been 
 revived by Swinburne, who describes it as "per- 
 fect in grace and power, tender and exquisite in 
 choice of language, full of a noble and masculine 
 delicacy in feeling and purpose." He attributes 
 the neglect into which it had fallen " to the imbe- 
 cile caprice of hazard and opinion." "Notwith- 
 standing," he adds, " the truth remains, that the 
 author of Joseph and his Brethren will some day 
 have to be acknowledged among the memorable 
 men of the second period in our poetry."
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 121 
 
 have been a tolerably free-and-easy 
 style about these gatherings ; for we 
 find that the members of the circle 
 were fond of making bets and laying 
 wagers on any subject which arose 
 for question, as, for instance, whether 
 Dr. Johnson's Dictionary was ori- 
 ginally published in quarto or folio. 
 George Kirkpatrick once lost a bet 
 he had entered into, that Congreve's 
 play of The Mourning Bride was 
 Shakespeare's. He paid in punch. 
 
 " Wells, Mouncey, and myself," 
 relates Hazlitt, "were all that re- 
 mained one evening. We had sat 
 together several hours without being 
 tired of one another's company. The 
 conversation turned on the Beauties 
 of Charles the Second's Court at 
 Windsor, and from thence to Count 
 Grammont, their gallant and gay 
 historian. . . . Wells then spoke of 
 Lucius Apuleius and his Golden Ass. 
 . . . The night waned, but our glasses
 
 122 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 brightened, enriched with pearls of 
 Grecian story. Our cup-bearer slept 
 in a corner of the room, like another 
 Endymion, in the pale ray of a half- 
 extinguished lamp. . . . Mouncey sat 
 with his hat on, and with a hectic 
 flush on his face, while any hope re- 
 mained ; but as soon as we rose to 
 go, he darted out of the room as 
 quick as lightning, determined not to 
 be the last that went." 
 
 " It was at the Southampton that 
 Hazlitt, Cruikshank, and Hone used 
 to meet, and discuss the subjects for 
 Hone's next squib. I believe that 
 Hazlitt is answerable for some of the 
 outlines of these, and for suggesting 
 to Cruikshank what he thought was 
 the salient point for illustration. The 
 story goes that he was once trying 
 to make himself understood to Cruik- 
 shank, when the latter got up, and, 
 dipping his finger in his ale-glass, 
 traced something in beer on the
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 123 
 
 table. ' Is that what you mean, sir ?' 
 he asked, and Hazlitt assented."* 
 
 Cruikshank's name is also found 
 associated with those of the staff of 
 Punch, who used to meet at the 
 Crown, near Drury Lane Theatre, 
 one of the London literary resorts. 
 "These individuals," says the author 
 of Lions : Living and Dead, describ- 
 ing some of the frequenters, " are 
 Punch's crack men. The tall one 
 rejoices in the sobriquet of Michael 
 Angelo Titmarsh, and is the well- 
 known author ofjeames's Yellow-Plush 
 Papers ; he is also a clever draughts- 
 man, as witness his designs to his 
 Vanity Fair, and the little ' bits ' 
 with his artistic mark to them (a 
 pair of spectacles) in Punch it is 
 Mr. W. M. Thackeray. The other 
 party is the still more celebrated (?) 
 author of Mrs. Caudle's Curtain 
 
 * Memoirs of IVm. Hazlitt, by his grandson, 
 W. Carew-Hazlitt.
 
 124 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 Lectures Mr. Douglas Jerrold. . . . 
 That tall, stout personage, with the 
 short curly hair, red round face, 
 Jewish nose, and burly form, is Mark 
 Lemon. He is the editor of Punch. . . . 
 The spare, dark gentleman talking 
 to him is John Leech, who generally 
 furnishes the large caricature in each 
 number, and who is the main prop 
 of Punch's pictorial portion."* 
 
 * " The year 1864 came, and found our ad- 
 mirable artist still at work as vigorously as ever ; 
 not robust, not rugged, but in seeming good health 
 and spirits, and fit to live and work for years. To 
 Punch, for that year, he had contributed eighty 
 pictures, when, on the 5th of November, appeared 
 a very amusing cut : An Irishman, dreadfully mal- 
 treated in a street fight, is taken charge of by his 
 wife, while a capitally indicated group of the 
 victor and his friends is seen in the distance, with 
 two little Irish boys nearer. ' Terence, ye great 
 ummadawn,' says the wife of his bussum to 
 the vanquished hero, ' what do yer git into this 
 Thrubble fur ?' Says the hero in response : ' D'ye 
 call it Thrubble, now? Why, it's Enjyement.' 
 It is as good a thing as ever Leech did as good 
 a cut as ever was in Punch. When he laid his 
 pencil down beside this drawing, it was never to 
 take it up again ; and six days before the appear- 
 ance of the paper in which the cut was published, 
 he had passed away."
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 125 
 
 At the literary breakfasts of 
 Samuel Rogers,* as also at those 
 of Monckton Milnes, one was always 
 certain of meeting people worth 
 listening to. The diary of Thomas 
 Moore is full of such entries as these : 
 " May 2Oth, 1828. Breakfasted with 
 Rogers." "22nd. Breakfasted at 
 Rogers' ; Luttrell and Lady Sarah 
 Lyttleton the party. . . . After break- 
 fast Sydney Smith came in. ... Smith 
 spoke of Cooper, the American writer, 
 whom he had been lately visiting." 
 " 23rd. Rogers having told me he 
 was to meet Scott this morning at 
 breakfast with Chantrey, went there 
 early. Found Scott sitting to Chan- 
 trey, with Rogers, Coke of Norfolk, 
 and Allan Cunningham assisting." 
 "June ist. Breakfasted with Rogers, 
 the Wordsworths and Luttrell." 
 
 * "To love literature and to excel in poetical 
 composition were," says Dr. Mackay, referring 
 to Rogers in his Memorials of a Literary Life, 
 "unfailing passports to his regard."
 
 126 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 Lady Morgan, who also frequented 
 Rogers' breakfasts, is remembered 
 for her hatred of Macaulay, whom 
 she sometimes met there. The sole 
 reason for her dislike was, one may 
 suppose, that two of a trade never 
 agree ; for both were brilliant talkers 
 Lady Morgan, in fact, has usually 
 been considered a rare gossip. It 
 was at one of these morning parties, 
 when Hookham Frere was present, 
 that Coleridge talked for three hours 
 without intermission about poetry ; 
 " and so admirably," says Rogers, 
 " that I wish every word he uttered 
 had been written down." 
 
 It is said that Milnes' literary 
 breakfasts, although not so sumpt- 
 uous as those of Rogers, were per- 
 fect in their way, and far more 
 sociable and agreeable to those 
 who preferred quiet conversation to 
 crowds. Macaulay and Thackeray 
 were frequent attendants ; and it
 
 THE DEB A TABLE LAND BET WEEN. 1 27 
 
 need hardly be added that, with the 
 marvellous powers of memory of the 
 one, and the caustic wit of the other, 
 these two in themselves were com- 
 pany sufficient, and their conversa- 
 tion more than ordinary mortals are 
 usually favoured with. 
 
 Years ago, when Tennyson spent 
 a good deal of his time in London, a 
 little knot of literary friends had a 
 standing engagement to dine together 
 once a month ; and the parties were 
 almost the ideal of unconventional 
 friendliness. Among the number 
 were Carlyle, Cunningham, Mill, 
 Thackeray, Forster, Sterling, Landor, 
 and Macready. "Here," says Hattie 
 Tyng Griswold in her Home-Life of 
 Great Authors, "the conversation was 
 of the best, Carlyle always coming 
 out strong, and all the rest content 
 to listen. However, Carlyle, unlike 
 many great conversers, never mo- 
 nopolized the conversation. It was
 
 128 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 always dialogue and not monologue 
 with him in any mixed company, 
 though he would discourse at length 
 to one or two visitors. 
 
 " Tennyson, like many men of 
 letters, loves to talk about his own 
 work, and is very fond of reading his 
 poems to his friends. This is, of 
 course, very delightful to those friends, 
 if the reading be not too pro- 
 longed, although he is said to chant 
 in rather a disagreeable manner. 
 He is a great egotist, and does not 
 like to listen to other people when 
 they talk about themselves. We are 
 told that Charles Sumner once paid 
 him a visit, and bored him very 
 much by a long talk upon American 
 affairs, in which Tennyson took no 
 interest. When Sumner finally made 
 a sufficient pause, Tennyson changed 
 the subject by inquiring if his visitor 
 had ever read The Princess. Sumner 
 replied that it was one of his favourite
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LAND BET WEEN. 1 29 
 
 poems, whereupon Tennyson handed 
 him the book, and asked him to 
 read. Sumner began, but was soon 
 stopped by Tennyson, who wished to 
 show him how a passage should be 
 read. He went on reading aloud in 
 his high nasal voice, until Sumner 
 grew very weary, but did not dare to 
 move, for fear of being thought un- 
 appreciative. On and on read the 
 poet, page after page, never making 
 a moment's pause, or giving Sumner 
 any chance to escape, until he had 
 read the whole poem. It is said that 
 Sumner never dared pay him another 
 visit. Being a decided egotist him- 
 self, it was painfully hard for the dis- 
 tinguished American to subordinate 
 himself for so long a time, and his 
 friends amused themselves very much 
 at the idea." 
 
 One of the most interesting pic- 
 tures at the Dante Rossetti Exhibi- 
 tion held in London after the poet- 
 
 9
 
 130 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 painters death, was a sketch of 
 Tennyson reading Maud, which is 
 now in the possession of Robert 
 Browning. This little picture was 
 reproduced in the issue for December, 
 1883, of Harper's Magazine; and in 
 a charming gossipy article accom- 
 panying it, Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie 
 says : 
 
 " Maud grew out of a remark of 
 Sir John Simeon's, to whom Tenny- 
 son had read the lines, 
 
 " ' O that 'twere possible 
 After long grief and pain,' 
 
 which lines were, so to speak, the 
 heart of Maud. Sir John said that it 
 seemed to him as if something were 
 wanting to explain the story of this 
 poem, and so by degrees it all grew. 
 One little story was told me on the 
 authority of Mr. Henry Sidgwick, 
 who was perhaps present on that
 
 THE DEB A TABLE LAND BET WEEN. 131 
 
 occasion. Mr. Tennyson was read- 
 ing the poem to a silent company 
 assembled in the twilight, and when 
 he got to the birds in the high hall 
 garden calling ' Maud, Maud, Maud,' 
 he stopped short, and asked an 
 authoress, who happened to be 
 present, what birds these were. The 
 authoress, much alarmed, and feeling 
 that she must speak, and that the 
 eyes of the whole company were 
 upon her, faltered out, ' Nightingales, 
 sir.' ' Pooh,' said Tennyson, ' what 
 a cockney you are ! Nightingales 
 don't say " Maud." Rooks do, or 
 something like it. " Caw, caw, caw, 
 caw, caw.'" Then he went on read- 
 ing. 
 
 " Reading, is it ? One can hardly 
 describe it. It is a sort of mystical 
 incantation, a chant in which every 
 note rises and falls and reverberates 
 again. As we sit around the twilight 
 room at Farringford, with its great 
 
 92
 
 132 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY; AND 
 
 oriel-window looking to the garden, 
 across fields of hyacinth and self- 
 sowed daffodils toward the sea, 
 where the waves wash against the 
 rocks, we seem carried by a tide not 
 unlike the ocean's sound ; it fills the 
 room, it ebbs and flows away ; and 
 when we leave, it is with a strange 
 music in our ears, feeling that we 
 have for the first time, perhaps, 
 heard what we may have read a 
 hundred times before."* 
 
 * " In addition to the Sundays ' at home,'" says 
 J. W. Cross in his Life of George Eliot, " the 
 Priory doors were open to a small circle of very 
 intimate friends on other days of the week. Of 
 evening entertainments there were few, I think, 
 after 1870. I remember some charming litile 
 dinners never exceeding six persons ; and one 
 notable evening when the Poet Laureate read 
 aloud Maud, The Northern Farmer, and parts of 
 other poems. It was very interesting on this occa- 
 sion to see the two most widely known representa- 
 tives of contemporary English literature sitting 
 side by side." 
 
 We find a genuine touch of hero-worship in the 
 following short account, by Mrs. Gilchrist, of a 
 visit from Tennyson. " I was sitting," she says, 
 " under the yew-tree yesterday, when Fanny [the 
 maidservant] came to me and put a card into my
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LA ND BET WEEN. 1 33 
 
 " The House of the Seven Gables was 
 finished yesterday ! Mr. Hawthorne 
 read me the close last evening !" 
 Who could be pitied for sharing the 
 enthusiasm which prompted Mrs. 
 Hawthorne to pen this announce- 
 ment ? " How you will enjoy the 
 book !" she continues " its depth of 
 wisdom, its high tone, the flowers of 
 Paradise scattered over all the dark 
 places, the sweet wallflower scent of 
 Phoebe's character, the wonderful 
 pathos and charm of old Uncle 
 
 hand. And whose name do you think was on 
 that card ? If I were talking instead of writing, 
 I should make you guess and keep you in suspense 
 a long while ; but that is no use in a letter, be- 
 cause you can peep forward. It was 'Mr. Alfred 
 Tennyson." He looks older than I expected, be- 
 cause, of course, the portraits one was early familiar 
 with have stood still in one's mind as the image to 
 be associated with that great name. But he is, to 
 my thinking, far nobler-looking now every inch 
 a king ; features are massive, eyes very grave and 
 penetrating, hair long, still very dark, and, though 
 getting thin, falls in such a way as to give a pecu- 
 liar beauty to the mystic head." Anne Gilchrist, 
 by H. H. Gilchrist.
 
 134 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 Venner. I only wish you could have 
 heard the poet sing his own song, as 
 I did ; but yet the book needs no 
 adventitious aid it makes its own 
 music, for I read it all over again to 
 myself yesterday, except the three 
 last chapters." 
 
 Hannah More relates that when 
 on a visit to the Garricks in 1776, 
 David Garrick read aloud to Mrs. 
 Garrick and herself her (Hannah's) 
 last poem. " After dinner," she says, 
 " Garrick read Sir Eldred with all 
 his pathos and all his graces. I think 
 I was never so ashamed in my life ; 
 but he read it so superbly that I 
 cried like a child. Only think what 
 a ridiculous thing to cry at the 
 reading of one's own poetry." 
 
 But sympathetic listeners are not 
 always to be obtained, even for pro- 
 ductions of undoubted genius. " A 
 touching incident connected with
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LA ND BET WEEN. 1 35 
 
 the manuscrfpt of Paul and Virginia 
 is recorded by L. Aimd Martin. 
 Madame Necker invited St. Pierre 
 to bring his new story into her salon, 
 and read it, before publication, to a 
 company of distinguished and en- 
 lightened auditors. She promised 
 that the judges she would convene 
 to hear him were among those she 
 esteemed the most worthy. Monsieur 
 Necker himself, as a distinguished 
 favour, would be at home on the 
 occasion. Buffon, the Abbe* Galiani, 
 Monsieur and Madame Germain, 
 were among the tribunal when St. 
 Pierre appeared and sat down, the 
 manuscript of Paul and Virginia open 
 before him. At first he was heard 
 in profound silence ; he went on> 
 and the attention grew languid, the 
 august assembly began to whisper, 
 to yawn, and then to listen no longer. 
 Monsieur de Buffon pulled out his 
 watch and called for his horses ; those
 
 136 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 sitting near the door noiselessly 
 slipped out ; one of the company 
 was seen in profound slumber ; some 
 of the ladies wept, but Monsieur 
 Necker jeered at them, and they, 
 ashamed of their tears, dared not 
 confess how interested they had 
 been. When the reading was finished, 
 not one word of praise followed it. 
 Madame Necker criticised the con- 
 versations in the book, and spoke of 
 the tedious and commonplace action 
 in the story. A shower of iced 
 water seemed to fall on poor St. 
 Pierre, who retired from the room in 
 a state of overwhelming depression. 
 He felt as if a sentence of death had 
 been pronounced on his story, and 
 that Paul and Virginia was unworthy 
 to appear before the public eye." 
 
 The sequel, however, is more 
 pleasing. " But a man of genius 
 the painter, Joseph Vernet, who had 
 not been present at the reading at
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LA ND BETWEEN. 137 
 
 Madame Necker's dropped in one 
 morning on St. Pierre in his garret, 
 and revived his almost sinking cour- 
 age. ' Perhaps monsieur will read 
 his new story to his friend Vernet ?' 
 So the author took up his manuscript, 
 which since the fatal day had been 
 cast aside, and began to read. As 
 Vernet listened the charm fell 
 upon him, and at every page he 
 uttered an exclamation of delight. 
 Soon he ceased to praise ; he only 
 wept. When St. Pierre reached that 
 part of the book which Madame 
 Necker had found so much fault 
 with, the author proposed to omit 
 that portion of the narrative ; but 
 Vernet would not consent to omit 
 anything. When the book was 
 finished, Vernet threw his arms 
 about St. Pierre, and told him he 
 had produced a chef d'ceuvre. ' My 
 friend,' exclaimed Vernet, ' you are a 
 great painter, and I dare to promise
 
 138 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY; AND 
 
 you a great reputation !' Fifty 
 editions, the year Paul and Virginia 
 was published, attested the wise 
 judgment of Joseph Vernet."* 
 
 We all know Longfellow's transla- 
 tion of The Blind Girl of Castel Cuille, 
 with its musical refrain, 
 
 "The roads should blossom, the roads should 
 
 bloom, 
 So fair a bride shall leave her home ;" 
 
 and now, referring as we are to the 
 reading of their own works by famous 
 writers, we remember the charming 
 account given by Louisa Stuart Cos- 
 tello, in her Beam and the Pyrenees, 
 of a visit to Jasmin, the author of 
 the poem, " who is to the south of 
 France what Burns is to the south 
 of Scotland, the representative of the 
 heart of the people one of those 
 happy bards who are born with their 
 mouths full of birds." 
 
 " At the entrance of the Prome- 
 nade du Gravier," says Miss Cos- 
 
 * James T. Fields Underbrush.
 
 THE DEB A TABLE LAND BET WEEN . 1 39 
 
 tello, " is a row of small houses 
 some cafes, others shops, the indica- 
 tion of which is a painted cloth 
 placed across the way, with the 
 owner's name in bright gold letters, 
 in the manner of the arcades in the 
 streets, and their announcements. 
 One of the most glaring of these was, 
 we observed, a bright blue flag, bor- 
 dered with gold, on which, in large 
 gold letters, appeared the name of 
 ' Jasmin, Coiffeur.' We entered, and 
 were welcomed by a smiling, dark- 
 eyed woman, who informed us that 
 her husband was busy at that mo- 
 ment dressing a customer's hair, but 
 he was desirous to receive us, and 
 begged we would walk into his par- 
 lour at the back of the shop. 
 
 ***** 
 " She exhibited to us a laurel 
 crown of gold, of delicate workman- 
 ship, sent from the city of Clemence 
 Isaure, Toulouse, to the poet, who
 
 140 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 will probably one day take his place 
 in the capitoul. Next came a golden 
 cup, with an inscription in his honour, 
 given by the citizens of Auch ; a gold 
 watch, chain and seals, sent by the 
 King, Louis Philippe ; an emerald 
 ring, worn and presented by the 
 lamented Duke of Orleans ; a pearl 
 pin, by the graceful Duchess, who, on 
 the poet's visit to Paris, accompanied 
 by his son, received him in the words 
 he puts into the mouth of Henri 
 Quatre : 
 
 ' ' ' Brabes Gaseous ! 
 
 A moun amou per botts aon dibes creyre ; 
 Benes I bents ! ey plaze de bous bey re : 
 Aproucha bous /' 
 
 a fine service of linen, the offering of 
 the town of Pau, after its citizens 
 had given fetes in his honour and 
 loaded him with caresses and praises; 
 and nicknacks and jewels of all de- 
 scriptions offered to him by lady- 
 ambassadresses and great lords, 
 English ' misses ' and ' miladis,' and
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LA ND BET WEEN. 141 
 
 French and foreigners of all nations 
 who did or who did not understand 
 Gascon. 
 
 " All this, though startling, was 
 not convincing. Jasmin, the barber, 
 might only be a fashion, a furore, a 
 caprice, after all ; and it was evident 
 that he knew how to get up a scene 
 well. When we had become nearly 
 tired of looking over these tributes to 
 his genius, the door opened, and the 
 poet himself appeared. His manner 
 was free and unembarrassed, well- 
 bred and lively ; he received our 
 compliments naturally, and like one 
 accustomed to homage ; said he was 
 ill, and unfortunately too hoarse to 
 read anything to us, or should have 
 been delighted to do so. He spoke 
 with a broad Gascon accent, and 
 very rapidly and eloquently ; ran over 
 the story of his successes, told us that 
 his grandfather had been a beggar, 
 and all his family very poor ; that he
 
 142 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 was now as rich as he wished to be ; 
 his son placed in a good position at 
 Nantes ; then showed us his son's 
 picture, and spoke of his disposition,. 
 to which his brisk little wife added 
 that, though no fool, he had not his 
 father's genius, to which truth Jasmin 
 assented as a matter of course. I 
 told him of having seen mention 
 made of him in an English review, 
 which he said had been sent him by 
 Lord Durham, who had paid him a 
 visit ; and I then spoke of Me cat 
 mouri as known to me. This was 
 enough to make him forget his 
 hoarseness and every other evil ; it 
 would never do for me to imagine 
 that that little song was his best 
 composition ; it was merely his first ; 
 he must try to read to me a little of 
 L'Abuglo a few verses of Frongou- 
 neto. ' You will be charmed,' said 
 he ; ' but if I were well, and you 
 would give me the pleasure of your
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LA ND BET WEEN. 143 
 
 company for some time, if you were 
 not merely running through Agen, I 
 would kill you with weeping I 
 would make you die with distress for 
 my poor Margarido my pretty 
 Fron9ouneto !' 
 
 " He caught up two copies of his 
 book from a pile lying on the table, 
 and, making us sit close to him, he 
 pointed out the French translation 
 on one side, which he told us to 
 follow while he read in Gascon. He 
 began in a rich, soft voice, and as he 
 advanced, the surprise of Hamlet on 
 hearing the player-king recite the 
 disasters of Hecuba was but a type 
 of ours, to find ourselves carried 
 away by the spell of his enthusiasm. 
 His eyes swam in tears ; he became 
 pale and red, he trembled, he re- 
 covered himself; his face was now 
 joyous, now exulting, gay, jocose ; in 
 fact, he was twenty actors in one ; he 
 rang the changes from Rachel to
 
 144 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 Bouffe ; and he finished by delighting 
 us, besides beguiling us of our tears 
 and overwhelming us with astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 " He would have been a treasure 
 on the stage, for he is still, though 
 his first youth is passed, remarkably 
 good-looking and striking ; with black 
 sparkling eyes of intense expression ; 
 a fine ruddy complexion ; a counten- 
 ance of wondrous mobility ; a good 
 figure, and action full of fire and 
 grace ; he has handsome hands, 
 which he uses with infinite effect ; 
 and, on the whole, he is the best 
 actor of the kind I ever saw. I could 
 now quite understand what a trouba- 
 dour or jongleur might be, and I look 
 upon Jasmin as a revived specimen 
 of that extinct race. Such as he is 
 might have been Gaucelm Faidit, of 
 Avignon, the friend of Cceur de Lion, 
 who lamented the death of the hero 
 in such moving strains; such might
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LA ND BET WEEN. 145 
 
 have been Bernard de Ventadour, 
 who sang the praises of Queen 
 Elinore's beauty; such Geoffrey Rudel 
 of Blaye, on his own Garonne; 
 such the wild Vidal; certain it is, 
 that none of these troubadours of old 
 could more move, by their singing or 
 reciting, than Jasmin, in whom all 
 their long-smothered fire and tra- 
 ditional magic seems re-illumined. 
 
 " We found we had stayed hours 
 instead of minutes with the poet ; 
 but he would not hear of any apology 
 only regretted that his voice was 
 so out of tune in consequence of a 
 violent cold, under which he was 
 really labouring, and hoped to see us 
 again. He told us our countrywomen 
 of Pau had laden him with kindness 
 and attention, and spoke with such 
 enthusiasm of the beauty of certain 
 * misses,' that I feared his little wife 
 would feel somewhat piqued ; but, on 
 the contrary, she stood by smiling 
 
 10
 
 146 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 and happy, and enjoying the stories 
 of his triumphs. I remarked that he 
 had restored the poetry of the trou- 
 badours ; asked him if he knew their 
 songs ; and said he was worthy to 
 stand at their head. ' I am indeed a 
 troubadour,' said he with energy ; 
 ' but I am far beyond them all ; they 
 were but beginners ; they never com- 
 posed a poem like my Fron$ouneto ! 
 there are no poets in France now 
 there cannot be ; the language does 
 not admit of it ; where is the fire, 
 the spirit, the expression, the tender- 
 ness, the force of the Gascon ? 
 French is but the ladder to reach 
 the first floor of Gascon how can 
 you get up to a height except by 
 a ladder ?" 
 
 By a not unnatural transition 
 our attention is carried from this 
 poetic hair-dresser to the baker of 
 Nismes. " In Nismes," writes Hans 
 Christian Andersen, in his Story of
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 147 
 
 my Life, " lives the baker Reboul, 
 who writes the most delightful poems; 
 whoever knows him not for this, 
 knows him probably from Lamar- 
 tine's Travels to the East I found the 
 house, went into the bakehouse, and 
 addressed myself to a man in his shirt- 
 sleeves, who was just putting bread 
 into the oven ; it was Reboul himself ; 
 a noble countenance, expressing a 
 manly character, greeted me. When 
 I mentioned my name, he was polite 
 enough to say that he knew it from 
 the Revue de Paris, and requested me 
 to visit him in the afternoon, for he 
 should then be able to receive me 
 better. When I came again, I found 
 him in an almost elegant little room, 
 which was adorned with pictures, 
 statues, and books, the latter not 
 only of French literature, but also 
 translations of the Greek classics. A 
 picture on the wall represented his 
 most celebrated poem, The Dying 
 
 10 2
 
 148 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 Child. From Marmier's Chansons du 
 Nord, he knew that I had treated the 
 same subject, and I told him that it 
 had its origin in my schooldays. If 
 I had seen him in the morning as 
 the industrious baker, now he was 
 altogether the poet ; he spoke in an 
 animated way of the literature of his 
 country, and expressed his wish to 
 see the North, the scenery and intel- 
 lect of which seemed to interest him. 
 With great esteem I took leave of a 
 man to whom the Muses have granted 
 no small share of endowment, but 
 who, however, has common-sense 
 enough, despite the homage which is 
 paid him, to continue at his honest 
 employment, and prefers to be the 
 remarkable baker at Nismes, instead 
 of losing himself in Paris, after a 
 short homage, among hundreds of 
 poets." 
 
 We are wondering just here, 
 whether it was indeed the essentially
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LA ND BETWEEN. 1 49 
 
 critical attitude of Dr. Johnson's 
 mind which caused him, on hearing 
 one of his papers in the Rambler read, 
 to shake his head and mumble " Too 
 wordy ;" and at another time, when 
 his tragedy of Irene was being read, 
 to leave the company, giving as his 
 reason for so doing : " Sir, I thought 
 it had been better." But who ever 
 does complete anything according 
 to his own elevated standard ? And 
 how often when men praise most 
 and speak loudest of the merits of 
 this achievement and the other, the 
 author is conscious of the defects of 
 his work in a measure which will 
 never be understood by any other ! 
 The reason lies in the fact that there 
 
 " Dwells within the soul of every artist 
 
 More than all his efforts can express ; 
 And he knows the best remains unuttered ; 
 Sighing at what we call his success. 
 
 " Vainly he may strive ; he may not tell us 
 
 All the sacred mystery of the skies, 
 Vainly he may strive ; the deepest beauty 
 Cannot be unveiled to mortal eyes.
 
 150 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 " And the more devoutly that he listens, 
 And the holier message that is sent, 
 Still the more his soul must struggle vainly, 
 Bowed beneath a noble discontent."* 
 
 In his Autobiography, Gibbon gives 
 us an interesting glimpse of Voltaire 
 at Lausanne. The historian was, 
 at the time of which he writes, a 
 youth of twenty, and was busy com- 
 pleting his education. 
 
 " Before I was recalled from 
 Switzerland," he says, " I had the 
 satisfaction of seeing the most extra- 
 ordinary man of the age a poet, an 
 historian, a philosopher, who has 
 filled thirty quartos of prose and 
 verse with his various productions, 
 often excellent, and always entertain- 
 ing. Need I add the name of 
 Voltaire ? After forfeiting, by his 
 own misconduct, the friendship of 
 the first of kings, he retired, at the 
 age of sixty, with a plentiful fortune, 
 
 * Miss Procter's Unexpressed.
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LAND BET WEEN. 1 5 1 
 
 to a free and beautiful country, 
 and resided two winters (1757 and 
 1758) in the town and neighbour- 
 hood of Lausanne. My desire of 
 beholding Voltaire, whom I then 
 rated above his real magnitude, was 
 easily gratified. He received me 
 with civility as an English youth, 
 but I cannot boast of any peculiar 
 notice or distinction Virgilium vidi 
 tantum. 
 
 " The ode which he composed on 
 his first arrival on the banks of the 
 Leman Lake, O Maison d'A ristippe ! 
 O Jardin cTEpictire, etc., had been 
 imparted as a secret to the gentle- 
 man by whom I was introduced. He 
 allowed me to read it twice ; I knew 
 it by heart ; and as my discretion 
 was not equal to my memory, the 
 author was soon displeased by the 
 circulation of a copy. In writing 
 this trivial anecdote, I wished to 
 observe whether my memory was
 
 152 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY; AND 
 
 impaired, and I have the comfort of 
 finding that every line of the poem 
 is still engraved in fresh and indelible 
 characters. The highest gratifica- 
 tion which I derived from Voltaire's 
 residence at Lausanne was the un- 
 common circumstance of hearing a 
 great poet declaim his own produc- 
 tions on the stage. He had formed 
 a company of ladies and gentlemen, 
 some of whom were not destitute of 
 talents. A decent theatre was framed 
 at Monrepos, a country house at the 
 end of a suburb ; dresses and scenes 
 were provided at the expense of the 
 actors ; and the author directed the 
 rehearsals with the zeal and attention 
 of paternal love. In two successive 
 winters his tragedies of Zaire, Alzire, 
 Zulime, and his sentimental comedy 
 of the Enfant Prodigue, were played 
 at the theatre of Monrepos. Vol- 
 taire represented the characters best 
 adapted to his years Lusignan,
 
 THE DEB A TA BLE LA ND BET WEEN. 1 53 
 
 Alvarez, Benassar, Euphemon. His 
 declamation was fashioned to the 
 pomp and cadence of the old stage, 
 and .he expressed the enthusiasm of 
 poetry rather than the feelings of 
 nature. My ardour, which soon be- 
 came conspicuous, seldom failed of 
 procuring me a ticket. The habits of 
 pleasure fortified my taste for the 
 French theatre, and that taste has, 
 perhaps, abated my idolatry for the 
 gigantic genius of Shakespeare, which 
 is inculcated from our infancy as the 
 first duty of an Englishman. The 
 wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his 
 table and theatre, refined, in a visible 
 degree, the manners of Lausanne ; 
 and, however addicted to study, I 
 enjoyed my share of the amusements 
 of society. After the representation 
 of Monrepos, I sometimes supped 
 with the actors." 
 
 Referring to the composition of 
 The Chimes, Dickens once said to
 
 154 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 Lady Blessington : "All my affections 
 and passions got twined and knotted 
 up in it, and I became as haggard as 
 a murderer long before I wrote * the 
 end.' " He had undergone, he said, 
 " as much sorrow and agitation " in 
 the writing "as if the thing were 
 real," and when the last page was 
 written had indulged "in what women 
 call a good cry." But when it was 
 all finished, and lay before him in 
 definite characters, nothing would do 
 but that he should leave Italy to 
 read it to the choice friends he 
 loved, and whose approbation he so 
 thoroughly enjoyed. Accordingly, 
 Genoa was left behind, and London 
 reached in little more than three 
 weeks; and two days after his arrival 
 he was " reading his little book to 
 the choice spirits aforesaid, all as- 
 sembled for the purpose at Forster's 
 house. There they are," says Frank 
 T. Marzials, in his charming mono-
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN. 155 
 
 graph on Dickens ; " they live for us 
 still in Maclise's drawing, though 
 Time has plied his scythe among 
 them so effectually during the forty- 
 two years since flown, that each has 
 passed into the silent land. There 
 they sit Carlyle,* not the shaggy 
 Scotch terrier with the melancholy 
 eyes that we were wont to see in his 
 later days, but close-shaven and alert ; 
 and swift -witted Douglas Jerrold ; 
 and Laman Blanchard, whose name 
 goes darkling in the literature of the 
 last generation ; and Forster himself, 
 journalist and author of many books ; 
 and the painters Dyce, Maclise, and 
 Stanfield ; and Byron's friend and 
 school companion, the clergyman 
 
 * Carlyle said of Dickens' public reading : 
 "Dickens does it capitally, such as it is; acts 
 better than any Macready in the world ; a whole 
 tragic, comic, heroic, theatre visible, performing 
 under one hat, and keeping us laughing in a 
 sorry way, some of us thought the whole night. 
 He is a good creature, too, and makes fifty or 
 sixty pounds by each of these readings."
 
 i $6 SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY ; AND 
 
 Harness, who, like Dyce, pays to the 
 story the tribute of his tears." 
 
 We are tempted to indulge in yet 
 another picture of a private reading 
 at which Carlyle was present. " Leigh 
 Hunt had invited a few friends with 
 ourselves," says Mrs. Cowden Clarke 
 in her interesting Recollections of 
 Writers, " to hear him read his 
 newly- written play of A Legend of 
 Florence; and Thomas Carlyle was 
 among these friends. The hushed 
 room, its genial low light for a 
 single well-shaded lamp close by the 
 reader formed the sole point of 
 illumination the scarcely-seen faces 
 around, all bent in fixed attention 
 upon the perusing figure, the breath- 
 less presence of so many eager lis- 
 teners, all remains indelibly stationed 
 in the memory, never to be effaced or 
 weakened. It was not surpassed in 
 interest though strangely contrasted 
 in dazzle and tumult when the play
 
 THE DEBATABLE LAND BETWEEN 157 
 
 was brought out at Covent Garden 
 Theatre, and Leigh Hunt was called 
 on to the stage at its conclusion to 
 receive the homage of a public who 
 had long known him through his de- 
 lightful writings, and now caught at 
 this opportunity to let him feel and 
 see and hear their admiration of 
 those past works, as well as of his 
 present poetical play."
 
 V. 
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 " Patchwork may be of two distinct kinds. We 
 may have beautiful and artistic patchwork, made 
 up of brocades, silks, satins, Jine needlework, and 
 artistic tapestry ; or we may have coarse and 
 trumpery patchwork composed of tawdry and vulgar 
 prints or bits of flaunting handkerchiefs" 
 
 " Folk say, a wizard to a northern king 
 At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show, 
 That through one window men beheld the spring, 
 And through another saw the summer glow, 
 And through a third the fruited vines a-row, 
 While still, unheard, but in its wonted way, 
 Piped the drear wind of that December day." 
 WILLIAM MORRIS : " The Earthly Paradise." 
 
 WHAT evenings in Arcadia those 
 Wednesdays of Lamb's must have 
 been when Wordsworth, Southey, 
 Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Hazlitt, 
 Coleridge, Talfourd, and such men
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 159 
 
 of culture and imagination gathered 
 round their host ! But the " gentle 
 Elia " has been so deservedly written 
 about of late, and every incident in 
 his blameless life has been so read 
 and re-read and dwelt upon lovingly, 
 that aught that could be related to 
 serve our purpose would be but a re- 
 cooking of some tender morsel. The 
 writings of those who were on terms 
 of friendship with him abound with 
 such scraps as the following : 
 
 " December 5th, 1826. Spent the 
 evening at Lamb's. When I went in, 
 they (Charles and his sister) were 
 alone, playing at cards together ;" 
 and " Friday, July I3th. Spent the 
 evening at Leigh Hunt's, with the 
 Lambs, Atherstone, Mrs. Shelley, and 
 the Gliddons. Lamb talked admir- 
 ably about Dryden and some of the 
 older poets, in particular of Dave- 
 nant's Gondiberi" etc., etc.* 
 
 * P. G. Patmore.
 
 160 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 Of Lamb's "At homes," Percy 
 Fitzgerald writes : " To these nights 
 at his house to the little rooms, 
 hung round with engravings after 
 Hogarth, and Poussin, Raphael, and 
 Titian every guest looked back with 
 a fond longing. Milton hung on the 
 wall, and from Milton he would read 
 noble passages, actually weeping as 
 he read." 
 
 Hazlitt first made Lamb's ac- 
 quaintance at Godwin's house, where 
 he found Coleridge, Godwin, and 
 Holcroft in a heated controversy as 
 to whether it was better to have man 
 as he was, or as he is to be. " Give 
 me man," suggested Lamb, " as he is 
 not to be." It is interesting to know 
 that the last time Hazlitt (who at 
 one time was ambitious to succeed 
 as an artist) took his brush in hand, 
 it was to paint the portrait of Lamb 
 dressed as a Venetian Senator. " The 
 picture represents Lamb as he was
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 161 
 
 about thirty, and it is by far the 
 most pleasing and characteristic re- 
 semblance we possess of him as a 
 comparatively young man. The cos- 
 tume was the painter's whim, and 
 must be said to detract from the 
 whole."* 
 
 I don't think Lamb could have 
 forgiven the painter this Venetian- 
 Senator draping of his staid person, 
 for he seems to have taken a sardonic 
 pleasure in misbehaving himself in 
 Hazlitt's company whenever the 
 slightest opportunity offered itself. 
 Even at Hazlitt's wedding he was en- 
 gaged in some mischief; and it must 
 have been mischief of a kind to please 
 the maker mightily, for in a letter to 
 Southey, nearly eight years after the 
 event, he thus refers to it : "I was at 
 Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to 
 have been turned out several times 
 
 * Memoirs of William Hazlitt, by W. Carew 
 Hazlitt. 
 
 II
 
 162 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 during the ceremony. Anything awful 
 makes me laugh." 
 
 In his Letters, Conversations, and 
 Recollections of Coleridge, Allsop says : 
 " The first night I ever spent with 
 Lamb was after a day with Coleridge, 
 when we returned by the same stage ; 
 and from something I had said or 
 done of an unusual kind, I was asked 
 to pass the night with him and his 
 sister. Thus commenced an intimacy 
 which never knew an hour's inter- 
 ruption to the day of his death. 
 
 " Lamb asked me what I thought 
 of Coleridge. I spoke as I thought. 
 ' You should have seen him twenty 
 years ago,' said he with one of his 
 sweet smiles ; ' when he was with 
 me at the Cat and Salutation in 
 Newgate Market. Those were days 
 (or nights), but they were marked 
 with a white stone. Such were his 
 extraordinary powers, that when it 
 was time for him to go and be
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 163 
 
 married, the landlord entreated his 
 stay, and offered him free quarters if 
 he would only talk.' " 
 
 Lamb never ceased thinking and 
 talking of these "Old Salutation" 
 nights with their "egg-flip and Oro- 
 nooko." There Coleridge and he used 
 to sup occasionally, and remain long 
 after they had " heard the chimes at 
 midnight." "There they discoursed 
 of Bowles, who was the god of Cole- 
 ridge's poetical idolatry, and of Burns 
 and Cowper, who, of recent poets, 
 in that season of comparative barren- 
 ness had made the deepest impression 
 on Lamb. There Coleridge talked 
 of ' Fate, free-will, fore-knowledge 
 absolute,' to one who desired ' to 
 find no end ' of the golden maze ; 
 and there he recited his early poems 
 with that deep sweetness of intona- 
 tion which sunk into the heart of 
 his hearer. To these meetings 
 Lamb was accustomed at all periods 
 
 II 2
 
 164 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 of his life to revert, as the season 
 when his finer intellects were 
 quickened into action. Shortly after 
 they had terminated, with Coleridge's 
 departure from London, he thus re- 
 called them in one of his letters : 
 ' When I read in your little volume 
 the effusion you call The Sigh, I 
 think I hear you again. I imagine 
 to myself the little smoky room at 
 the Cat and Salutation, where we sat 
 together through the winter nights 
 beguiling the cares of life with poetry.' 
 This was early in 1796 ; and in 1818, 
 when dedicating his works, then first 
 collected, to his earliest friend, he 
 thus spoke of the same meetings : 
 * Some of the sonnets, which shall be 
 carelessly turned over by the general 
 reader, may happily awaken in you 
 remembrances which I should be 
 sorry to doubt are totally extinct 
 the " memory of summer days and of 
 delightful years," even so far back as
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 165 
 
 those old suppers at our old inn 
 when life was fresh, and topics ex- 
 haustless, and you first kindled in 
 me, if not the power, yet the love of 
 poetry, and beauty, and kindliness.' 
 And so he talked of these unforgotten 
 hours in that short interval during 
 which death divided them.''* 
 
 In his essay Of Persons one would 
 wish to have seen, Hazlitt says that it 
 was Lamb who suggested the subject 
 at one of his pleasant evenings among 
 friends. 
 
 " On the question being started, 
 Ayrton said, ' I suppose the two 
 first persons you would choose to see 
 would be the two greatest names in 
 English literature, Sir Isaac Newton 
 and Mr. Locke ?' In this Ayrton, as 
 usual, reckoned without his host. 
 Everyone burst out laughing at the 
 expression of Lamb's face, in which 
 impatience was restrained by courtesy. 
 
 * Talfourd's Letters of Charles Lamb.
 
 166 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 ' Yes, the greatest names,' he stam- 
 mered out hastily, ' but they were not 
 persons not persons.' 'Not per- 
 sons ?' said Ayrton, looking wise and 
 foolish at the same time, afraid his 
 triumph might be premature. 'That is,' 
 rejoined Lamb, ' not characters, you 
 know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac 
 Newton, you mean the Essay on the 
 Human Understanding and the Prin- 
 cipia, which we have to this day. 
 Beyond their contents there is nothing 
 personally interesting in the men. 
 But what we want to see anyone 
 bodily for, is when there is something 
 peculiar, striking in the individuals, 
 more than we can learn from their 
 writings, and yet are curious to know. 
 I dare say Locke and Newton were 
 very like Kneller's portraits of them. 
 But who could paint Shakespeare ?' 
 ' Ay,' retorted Ayrton, ' there it is ; 
 then, I suppose, you would prefer seeing 
 him and Milton instead !' ' No,' said
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 167 
 
 Lamb, 'neither. I have seen so much 
 of Shakespeare on the stage and on 
 bookstalls, in frontispieces and on 
 mantelpieces, that I am quite tired 
 of the everlasting repetition ; and as 
 to Milton's face, the impressions that 
 have come down to us of it I do not 
 like ; it is too starched and puri- 
 tanical ; and I should be afraid of 
 losing some of the manna of his 
 poetry in the leaven of his coun- 
 tenance and the precisian's band and 
 gown.' ' I shall guess no more,' 
 said Ayrton. ' Who is it, then, you 
 would like to see " in his habit as he 
 lived," if you had your choice of the 
 whole range of English literature ?' 
 Lamb then named Sir Thomas 
 Browne and Fulke Greville, the 
 friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the 
 two worthies whom he should feel 
 the greatest pleasure to encounter on 
 the floor of his apartment in their 
 nightgowns and slippers, and to ex-
 
 168 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 change friendly greeting with them. 
 At this Ayrton laughed outright, and 
 conceived Lamb was jesting with 
 him ; but as no one followed his 
 example, he thought there might be 
 something in it, and waited for an 
 explanation in a state of whimsical 
 suspense. Lamb then went on as 
 follows : ' The reason why I pitch 
 upon these two authors is, that their 
 writings are riddles, and they them- 
 selves the most mysterious of person- 
 ages. They resemble the soothsayers 
 of old, who dealt in dark hints and 
 doubtful oracles ; and I should like 
 to ask them the meaning of what 
 no mortal but themselves, I should 
 suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. 
 Johnson : I have no curiosity, no 
 strange uncertainty about him ; he 
 and Boswell together have pretty 
 well let me into the secret of what 
 passed through his mind. He and 
 other writers like him are sufficiently
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 169 
 
 explicit : my friends whose repose 
 I should be tempted to disturb (were 
 it in my power) are implicit, inex- 
 tricable, inscrutable.' 
 
 ***** 
 " Some one then inquired of Lamb 
 if we could not see from the window 
 the Temple walk in which Chaucer 
 used to take his exercise ; and on his 
 name being put to the vote, I was 
 pleased to find that there was a 
 general sensation in his favour in 
 all but Ayrton, who said something 
 about the ruggedness of the metre, 
 and even objected to the quaintness 
 of the orthography. I was vexed at 
 this superficial gloss, pertinaciously 
 reducing everything to its own trite 
 level, and asked ' if he did not think 
 it would be worth while to scan the 
 eye that had first greeted the Muse 
 in that dim twilight and early dawn 
 of English literature ; to see the head 
 round which the visions of fancy
 
 i;o SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY, 
 
 must have played like gleams of 
 inspiration or sudden glory ; to 
 watch those lips that ' lisped in 
 numbers, for the numbers came ' as 
 by a miracle, or as if the dumb should 
 speak. . . . 
 
 " His interview with Petrarch is 
 fraught with interest. Yet I would 
 rather have seen Chaucer in company 
 with the author of the Decameron, and 
 have heard them exchange their best 
 stories together the Squire's Tale 
 against Thz Story of the Falcon, the 
 Wife of Bath's Prolog^te against the 
 A dventures of Friar A Ibert. How fine 
 to see the high mysterious brow 
 which learning then wore, relieved 
 by the gay, familiar tone of men of 
 the world, and by the courtesies of 
 genius ! Surely, the thoughts and 
 feelings which passed through the 
 minds of these great revivers of 
 learning, these Cadmuses who sowed 
 the teeth of letters, must have
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 171 
 
 stamped an expression on their fea- 
 tures as different from the moderns 
 as their books, and well worth the 
 perusal. . . . Lamb put it to me if I 
 should like to see Spenser as well as 
 Chaucer, and I answered, without 
 hesitation, ' No ; for that his beau- 
 ties were ideal, visionary, not palp- 
 able or personal, and therefore con- 
 nected with less curiosity about the 
 man. His poetry was the essence 
 of romance, a very halo round the 
 bright orb of fancy, and the bringing 
 in the individual might dissolve the 
 charm. No tones of voice could 
 come up to the mellifluous cadence 
 of his verse ; no form but of a winged 
 angel could vie with the airy shapes 
 he has described. He was (to my 
 apprehension) rather a ' creature of 
 the element, that lived in the rain- 
 bow and played in the plighted 
 clouds,' than an ordinary mortal. 
 Or if he did appear, I should wish it
 
 172 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 to be as a mere vision, like one of 
 his own pageants, and that he should 
 pass by unquestioned like a dream or 
 sound 
 
 " ' That was Arion crown'd ! 
 
 So went he playing on the wat'ry plain.' 
 
 SfC 5JC 5(C 5(C i|C 
 
 " We were now at a stand for a 
 short time, when Fielding was men- 
 tioned as a candidate ; only one, 
 however, seconded the proposition. 
 ' Richardson ?' ' By all means, but 
 only to look at him through the glass 
 door of his back shop, hard at work 
 upon one of his novels (the most ex- 
 traordinary contrast that ever was 
 presented between an author and his 
 works) ; not to let him come behind 
 his counter, lest he should want you 
 to turn customer, or to go upstairs 
 with him, lest he should offer to read 
 the first manuscript of Sir Charles 
 Grandison, which was originally 
 written in eight-and-twenty volumes 
 octavo, or get out the letters of his
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 173 
 
 female correspondents, to prove that 
 Joseph Andrews was low. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " Of all persons near our own time, 
 Garrick's name was received with the 
 greatest enthusiasm. . . . 
 
 " We were interrupted in the hey- 
 day and mid-career of this fanciful 
 speculation by a grumbler in the 
 corner, who declared it was a shame 
 to make all this rout about a mere 
 player and farce- writer, to the neglect 
 and exclusion of the fine old drama- 
 tists, the contemporaries and rivals 
 of Shakespeare. Lamb said he had 
 anticipated this objection when he 
 had named the author of Mustapha 
 and Alaham; and, out of caprice, 
 insisted upon keeping him to repre- 
 sent the set in preference to the wild, 
 hair-brained enthusiast, Kit Marlowe; 
 to the sexton of St. Ann's, Webster, 
 with his melancholy yew-trees and 
 death's-heads ; to Decker, who was
 
 174 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 but a garrulous proser ; to the volu- 
 minous Heywood ; and even to 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, whom we 
 might offend by complimenting the 
 wrong author on their joint produc- 
 tions. . . . Ben Jonson divided our 
 suffrages pretty equally. Some were 
 afraid he would begin to traduce 
 Shakespeare, who was not present 
 to defend himself. ... At length, 
 his romantic visit to Drummond of 
 Hawthornden* was mentioned, and 
 turned the scale in his favour. 
 
 * * * * * 
 " By this time it should seem that 
 some rumour of our whimsical de- 
 liberation had got wind, and had 
 disturbed the irritabile genus in their 
 shadowy abodes, for we received 
 messages from several candidates 
 that we had just been thinking of. 
 Gray declined our invitation, though 
 he had not yet been asked ; Gay 
 offered to come and bring in his 
 * See p. 112.
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 175 
 
 hand the Duchess of Bolton, the 
 original Polly ; Steele and Addison 
 left their cards as Captain Sentry* 
 and Sir Roger de Coverley; Swift 
 came in and sat down without speak- 
 ing a word, and quitted the room as 
 abruptly rf* Otway and Chatterton 
 were seen lingering on the opposite 
 side of the Styx, but could not muster 
 enough between them to pay Charon 
 his fare ; Thomson fell asleep in the 
 boat, and was rowed back again ; 
 and Burns sent a low fellow, one 
 John Barleycorn, an old companion 
 of his, who had conducted him to 
 the other world, to say that he had 
 during his lifetime been drawn out 
 of his retirement as a show, only to 
 be made an exciseman of, and that 
 he would rather remain where he 
 was. He desired, however, to shake 
 hands by his representative the 
 
 * A member of the Spectator Club, 
 t See p. 23.
 
 176 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 hand, thus held out, was in a burning 
 fever, and shook prodigiously. 
 
 " The morning broke with that 
 dim, dubious light by which Giotto, 
 Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio must have 
 seen to paint their earliest works ; 
 and we parted to meet again and 
 renew similar topics at night, the 
 next night, and the night after that, 
 till that night overspread Europe 
 which saw no dawn. The same 
 event, in truth, broke up our little 
 congress that broke up the great one. 
 But that was to meet again : our 
 deliberations have never been re- 
 sumed."* 
 
 Leigh Hunt's A n Earth upon Heaven 
 seems to have been suggested by this 
 charming essay of Hazlitt's. " Some- 
 body, a little while ago," Hunt begins, 
 
 * This paper was written about 1820, but the 
 event which it purports to describe occurred many 
 years before.
 
 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 177 
 
 " wrote an excellent article in the New 
 Monthly Magazine on Persons one would 
 wish to have known (sic). He should 
 write another on ' Persons one could 
 wish to have dined with.' There is 
 Rabelais, and Horace, and the Mer- 
 maid roisterers, and Charles Cotton, 
 and Andrew Marvell, and Sir Richard 
 Steele, cum multis aliis ; and for the 
 colloquial, if not for the festive part, 
 Swift, and Pope, and Dr. Johnson, 
 and Burke, and Home Tooke. What 
 a pity one cannot dine with them all 
 round ! People are accused of having 
 earthly notions of heaven. As it is 
 difficult to have any other, we may 
 be pardoned for thinking that we 
 could spend a very pretty thousand 
 years in diningand getting acquainted 
 with all the good fellows on record ; 
 and having got used to them, we 
 think we could go very well on, and 
 be content to wait some other thou- 
 sands for a higher beatitude. Oh, to 
 
 12
 
 178 SOCIAL AND IMAGINARY. 
 
 wear out one of the celestial lives of 
 a triple century's duration, and ex- 
 quisitely to grow old, in reciprocating 
 dinners and teas with the immortals 
 of old books ! Will Fielding ' leave 
 his card ' in the next world ? Will 
 Berkeley (an angel in a wig and lawn 
 sleeves) come to ask how Utopia gets 
 on ? Will Shakespeare (for the greater 
 the man, the more the good-nature 
 might be expected) know by intuition 
 that one of his readers (knocked up 
 with bliss) is dying to see him at the 
 Angel and Turk's Head, and come 
 lounging with his hands in his 
 doublet-pockets accordingly ?"
 
 VI. 
 
 WITH AN OLD LION. 
 
 " And that deep-mouthed Beotian Savage Landor 
 Has taken for a swan rogue Sout key's gander.''' 
 
 BYRON. 
 
 " // was a dream, ah ! what is not a dream ?" 
 
 LANDOR. 
 
 WHILST at Como, Landor received 
 a visit from Southey ; and this visit 
 must have been highly gratifying to 
 both if what Landor put into 
 Southey's mouth in the Imaginary 
 Conversations was in any way near 
 the truth. " Well do I remember," 
 he makes Southey say, " our long 
 conversation in the silent and soli- 
 tary church of Sant' Aboudis (surely 
 the coolest spot in Italy), and how 
 
 12 2
 
 i8o WITH AN OLD LION. 
 
 often I turned my head toward the 
 open door, fearing lest some pious 
 passer-by, or some more distant one 
 in the wood above, pursuing the 
 pathway that leads to the tower of 
 Luitprand, should hear the roof echo 
 with your laughter at the stories you 
 had collected about the brotherhood 
 and sisterhood of the place." 
 
 The hastiness of Lander's temper 
 was known to his friends as well 
 as to himself. Crabb Robinson 
 speaks of him as a " leonine " 
 man, with a fierceness of tone well 
 suited to his name, his decisions 
 being confident, and on all subjects, 
 whether of taste or life, unqualified, 
 each standing for itself, not caring 
 whether it was in harmony with what 
 had gone before or would follow from 
 the same oracular lips.* Robinson 
 
 * Lander's conduct in this direction was cer- 
 tainly a brilliant commentary on the words of 
 Emerson : "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin 
 of little minds, adored by little statesmen and
 
 WITH AN OLD LION. 181 
 
 adds : " He was conscious of his 
 own infirmity of temper, and told 
 me he saw few persons, because he 
 could not bear contradictions." And 
 yet between this 
 
 "Deep-mouthed Beotian Savage Lander " 
 
 and the " Gentle Elia " sympathy of 
 a kind existed. Whilst in London, 
 
 philosophers and divines. With consistency a 
 great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as 
 well concern himself with his shadow on the 
 wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, 
 and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in 
 hard words again, though it contradict everything 
 you said to-day." 
 
 On the 1 5th of May, 1833, Emerson dined with 
 Landor, and thus records his experience : "I 
 found him noble and courteous, living in a cloud 
 of pictures at his Villa Gherardesca, a fine house 
 commanding a beautiful landscape. I had in- 
 ferred from his books, or magnified from some 
 anecdotes, an impression of Achillean wrath an 
 untamable petulance. I do not know whether the 
 imputation were just or not, but certainly on this 
 May day his courtesy veiled that haughty mind, 
 and he was the most patient and gentle of hosis. 
 He . . . talked of Wordsworth, Byron, Mas- 
 singer, Beaumont and Fletcher. To be sure, he 
 is decided in his opinions, likes to surprise, and is 
 well content to impress, if possible, his English 
 whim upon the immutable past."
 
 i? 2 WITH AN OLD LION. 
 
 Landor was taken by Robinson to 
 see Charles Lamb, and was delighted 
 with him and his sister. It is said 
 that tipsy or sober, for a few years 
 before his death, Lamb was continu- 
 ally repeating Lander's Rose Aylmer ; 
 and all admirers of these two famous 
 men must remember the tenderness 
 of the verses addressed by Landor 
 to Mary Lamb on the death of her 
 brother : 
 
 ' ' Comfort thee, O thou mourner, yet awhile ! 
 
 Again shall Elia's smile 
 
 Refresh thy heart, where heart can ache no more. 
 What is it we deplore ? 
 
 " He leaves behind him, freed from griefs and 
 years, 
 
 Far worthier things than tears. 
 The love of friends without a single foe : 
 Unequalled lot below ! 
 
 " His gentle soul, his genius, these are thine ; 
 
 For these dost thou repine ? 
 He may have left the lowly walks of men ; 
 Left them he has ; what then ? 
 
 " Are not his footsteps followed by the eyes 
 
 Of all the good and wise ? 
 Tho' the warm day is over, yet they seek 
 Upon the lofty peak
 
 WITH AN OLD LION. 183 
 
 " Of his pure mind the roseate light that glows 
 
 O'er death's perennial snows. 
 Behold him ! from the region of the blest 
 He speaks : he bids thee rest." 
 
 The decidedness of Landor both in 
 his likes and dislikes affords us excuse 
 for referring to two or three other of 
 his interviews. At Bonn one day he 
 met Schlegel, and the next the poet 
 Arndt. Of Schlegel he writes to 
 Crabb Robinson : " He resembles 
 a little pot-bellied pony tricked out 
 with stars, buckles, and ribbons, 
 looking askance, from his ring and 
 halter in the market, for an apple 
 from one, a morsel of bread from 
 another, a fig of ginger from a 
 third, and a pat from everybody :" 
 His interview with Arndt, however, 
 " settled the bile this coxcomb of the 
 bazaar had excited." " In one of 
 the very last pieces of verse Landor 
 wrote," says Sidney Colvin, " I find 
 him recalling with pleasure how he 
 and Arndt had talked together in
 
 184 WITH AN OLD LION. 
 
 Latin thirty years before in the poet's 
 orchard ; how they had chanced to 
 hear a song of Arndt's own sung by 
 the people in the town below ; and 
 how nimbly the old poet had run and 
 picked up an apple to give his guest, 
 who had kept the pips and planted 
 them in his garden at Fiesole." 
 
 In a recent article in the New 
 York Nation, we find some interest- 
 ing particulars of Landor, and from 
 these we extract the following : 
 
 " His wife lived in a villa at or near 
 Fiesole for some time, and it was 
 there that, after an absence of thirty 
 years, Landor suddenly rejoined her 
 without a word of notice. He had 
 left her in a fit of caprice, and when 
 he returned as capriciously, he was 
 outraged and indignant to find that 
 no niche in the family circle had been 
 left vacant for him. He had taught 
 his family to do without him, and 
 had left them for thirty years to
 
 WITH AN OLD LION. 185 
 
 practise their lesson, and then was 
 bitterly disappointed when he found 
 how well they had learnt that lesson. 
 Late one night he appeared in 
 Florence, at the lodgings of his 
 faithful friends, the Robert Brown- 
 ings, in a towering rage, and vitu- 
 perating, no doubt, as only he could 
 vituperate, against the whole female 
 sex, and that arch-villain, his wife, in 
 particular. He would never go back 
 to her never ! Indeed, it was the 
 only possible decision to make. He 
 was at no time an easy man to live 
 with, and after that little absence 
 of thirty years, Mrs. Landor may be 
 forgiven if she did not receive him 
 with open arms. But she cannot be 
 forgiven for the long bill which she 
 sent after him, in which every lemon 
 that had been made into lemonade 
 for him during his brief stay was 
 entered and charged for; and it must 
 be remembered that the villa itself,
 
 1 86 WITH AN OLD LION. 
 
 with its garden and all its lemon- 
 trees, had been paid for out of 
 Landor's money. Some of the 
 Florentine courts of justice still, 
 perhaps, possess records of the suits 
 brought against Florentine citizens 
 by this impracticable Englishman. 
 The last time he appeared, whether 
 as prosecutor or defendant, in the 
 Syndic's court, he stooped to hoist 
 up a heavy bag which he had brought 
 with him, and which he placed on 
 the table before him, coolly observ- 
 ing that, as he knew every man in 
 Florence had his price, here was 
 money to secure judgment on his 
 side. The court, feeling itself this 
 time outraged beyond endurance, 
 pronounced sentence of banishment 
 against him, and he left Florence 
 never to return. Before he was 
 exiled, Landor had lived in rooms 
 above those occupied by his friends 
 the Brownings. They used to send
 
 WITH AN OLD LION. 187 
 
 his dinner up to him every day, and, 
 to a man of his vehement tempera- 
 ment, dinner was a very important 
 event. He would stand watch in 
 hand when the hour was approach- 
 ing, and if the dinner was a moment 
 behind time, he would seize the dish 
 and hurl its contents out of the 
 window. Mr. Browning's son, who 
 was then very young, well remembers 
 seeing a leg of mutton pass the 
 window of his father's room on one 
 of these occasions. An expensive 
 and troublesome inmate, no doubt ; 
 but what good times the three poets must 
 have had in those long evenings when 
 dinner was forgotten, and there was 
 nothing left to do but talk ! How 
 they must have enjoyed each other's 
 scholarship !" 
 
 I like to think of the pleasure 
 afforded the old lion in his last years 
 by two apparent trifles the society 
 of a young American lady, Miss
 
 1 88 WITH AN OLD LION. 
 
 Kate Field, to whom he taught 
 Latin ; and the visit of Swinburne, 
 one of his most ardent admirers, 
 who made a pilgrimage to Florence 
 on purpose to see the old man's face 
 before he died.
 
 VII. 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 " To say that this taste of ours is a petty taste, 
 the taste of valets, is simply to inveigh against one 
 of the instincts of our nature, the instinct which 
 to quote the words of Moore ' leads us to contem- 
 plate -with pleasure a great mind in its undress ;' 
 . . . and, perhaps, I may add, to inveigh against one 
 of the strongest charms of history and biography, 
 against the charm without which all history and 
 all biography are little more than ' an old 
 almanack.' " CHARLES PEBODY. 
 
 OCCASIONALLY a poem or work of 
 prose has been the result of some 
 stray hint dropped at a meeting of 
 friends ; in other cases, again, the 
 central idea has been the subject of 
 great talk and much beating out 
 before it assumed the importance
 
 igo BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 necessary to prompt its extension 
 into a work of art. 
 
 "The account Wordsworth gives 
 of the origin of the Ancient Mariner 
 is that in the autumn of 1797 he, 
 with his sister and Coleridge, started 
 from Alfoxden to visit Linton and 
 the Valley of Stones, and their 
 united funds being very small, they 
 agreed to defray the expenses of the 
 tour by writing a poem, to be sent to 
 the New Monthly Magazine. Accord- 
 ingly, as they proceeded along the 
 Quantock Hills, by Watchet, the 
 poem of the Ancient Mariner was 
 planned. It was founded, as Mr. 
 Coleridge said, on a dream narrated 
 by a friend of his. Much the 
 greater part of the story was Cole- 
 ridge's invention, but parts were sug- 
 gested by Wordsworth ; for example, 
 that some crime was to be committed 
 which should bring upon the * old 
 navigator,' as Coleridge delighted to
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 191 
 
 call him, the spectral persecution, as 
 a consequence of that crime and his 
 own wanderings." 
 
 The origin of Longfellow's Evan- 
 geline is thus described in the 
 Atlantic Monthly : " Hawthorne, 
 dining one day with Longfellow, 
 brought with him a friend from 
 Salem. After dinner this friend 
 said, 'I have been trying to per- 
 suade Hawthorne to write a story 
 based upon a legend of Acadie, 
 and still current there ; the legend 
 of a girl who, in the dispersion 
 of the Acadians, was separated from 
 her lover, and passed her life in 
 waiting and seeking for him, and 
 only found him dying in a hospital, 
 when both were old.' Longfellow 
 wondered that this legend did not 
 strike the fancy of Hawthorne, and 
 said to him, ' If you really have 
 made up your mind not to use it for 
 a story, will you give it to me for
 
 192 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 a poem ?' To this he assented, and 
 promised not to treat it in prose till 
 Longfellow had seen what he could 
 do with it in verse." What Long- 
 fellow did " do with it in verse " 
 is known tolerably well to the world 
 now. In November, 1847, Mrs. Haw- 
 thorne wrote to a friend : " Have 
 you seen the most exquisite of 
 reviews upon Evangeline very short, 
 but containing all ? Evangeline is 
 certainly the highest production of 
 Mr. Longfellow." 
 
 Burns had a companion whilst 
 composing Scots wfya hae wi' Wallace 
 bled; but he owed nothing to him 
 of the kind of debt of either Long 
 fellow or Coleridge. He was in- 
 debted to him, however, for his 
 silence and non-interruption. No 
 one can tell the story better than 
 Carlyle ; and so we use what he 
 relates of the matter : " Why should 
 we speak," he says, " of Scots wha hae
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 193 
 
 wi' Wallace bled, since all know of it 
 from the king to the meanest of his 
 subjects ? This dithyrambic was 
 composed on horseback ; in riding 
 in the middle of tempests, over 
 the wildest Galloway moor, in com- 
 pany with a Mr. Syme, who, observ- 
 ing the poet's looks, forbore to speak 
 judiciously enough ; for a man 
 composing Bruce 1 s Address might be 
 unsafe to trifle with. Doubtless this 
 stern hymn was singing itself, as he 
 formed it, through the soul of Burns; 
 but to the external ear, it should be 
 sung with the throat of the whirl- 
 wind. So long as there is warm 
 blood in the heart of Scotchman or 
 man, it will move in fierce thrills 
 under this war-ode ; the best, we 
 believe, that was ever written by any 
 pen." 
 
 Mrs. Hemans relates a conversa- 
 tion she had with Wordsworth in 
 which reference was made to this 
 
 13
 
 194 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 poem. " How much was I amused 
 yesterday," she says, " by a sudden 
 burst of indignation in Mr. Words- 
 worth ! We were sitting on a bank 
 overlooking Rydal Water, and speak- 
 ing of Burns. I said, ' Mr. Words- 
 worth, do you not think his war-ode, 
 Scots wha hae, has been a good 
 deal overrated, especially by Mr. 
 Carlyle, who calls it the noblest 
 lyric in the language ?' ' I am de- 
 lighted to hear you ask that ques- 
 tion,' was his reply. ' Overrated ! 
 trash stuff miserable inanity ! 
 without a thought ! without an 
 image !' etc., etc. Then he recited 
 the piece in a tone of unutterable 
 scorn, and concluded with a da capo 
 of 'Wretched stuff!'" 
 
 We have a delightful peep into the 
 inner life of a great writer in George 
 Eliot's own account of how she came 
 to write fiction. " One night," she 
 says, " G. " (Mr. Lewes) " went to
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 195 
 
 town on purpose to leave me a quiet 
 evening for writing it " (the portion 
 of Amos Barton in which Milly's 
 death occurs). " I wrote the chapter 
 from the news brought by the shep- 
 herd to Mrs. Hackit, to the moment 
 when Amos is dragged from the bed- 
 side, and I read it to G. when he 
 came home. We both cried over it, 
 and then he came up to me and 
 kissed me, saying, ' I think your 
 pathos is better than your fun.' " 
 
 Hobbes and Bacon were, it ap- 
 pears, excellent friends, and of great 
 service to each other. Aubrey, in 
 his Lives of Eminent Persons, referring 
 to Hobbes, says that Bacon " was 
 wont to have him walk with him in 
 his delicate groves, when he did 
 meditate ; and when a notion darted 
 into his lordship's mind, Mr. Hobbes 
 was presently to write it down, and 
 his lordship was wont to say that he 
 did it better than anyone else about 
 
 132
 
 196 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 him ; for that many times, when he 
 read their notes, he scarce under- 
 stood what they writ, because they 
 understood it not clearly them- 
 selves." 
 
 This method of work was alto- 
 gether out of Goldsmith's line. One 
 day a literary friend was expatiating 
 to him on the advantages of employ- 
 ing an amanuensis, and thus saving 
 time and the trouble of writing. 
 
 " How do you manage it ?" in- 
 quired Goldsmith. 
 
 " Why, I walk about the room and 
 dictate to a clever man, who puts 
 down very correctly all that I tell 
 him, so that I have nothing to do 
 more than just to look over the 
 manuscript and then send it to 
 press." 
 
 Goldsmith was delighted at the 
 idea, and asked his friend to send 
 his amanuensis the next morning. 
 The scribe accordingly waited upon
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 197 
 
 the doctor, and with pens, ink, and 
 paper placed in order before him, 
 waited to catch the oracle. Gold- 
 smith paced the room with great 
 solemnity several times ; but after 
 racking his brain to no purpose, he 
 put his hand into his pocket, and, 
 presenting the amanuensis with a 
 guinea, said : 
 
 " It won't do, my friend ; I find 
 that my head and hand must go 
 together." 
 
 We have so very few genuine peeps 
 behind the scenes upon authors at 
 work, that what Hans Christian 
 Andersen tells us of the elder Dumas 
 cannot fail to prove of interest. He 
 generally found him in bed, even long 
 after mid-day ; for it was his custom 
 to have pen, ink and paper in his 
 bedroom, where he wrote his dramas. 
 " On entering his apartment," says 
 Andersen, " I found him thus one 
 day. He nodded kindly to me, and
 
 198 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 said, ' Sit down a minute. I have 
 just now a visit from my Muse ; she 
 will be going directly.' He wrote on, 
 and after a brief silence shouted 
 ' Vivat !' sprang out of bed, and said, 
 ' The third act is finished !' ' 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds one day en- 
 tered Goldsmith's room unnoticed, 
 and found him seated at his desk, 
 with his pen in his hand and with 
 his paper before him ; " but he had 
 turned away from The Traveller, and 
 with uplifted hand was looking to- 
 wards a corner of the room, where a 
 little dog sat with difficulty on his 
 haunches, with imploring eyes. Rey- 
 nolds looked over the poet's shoulder 
 and read a couplet whose ink was 
 still wet : 
 
 " ' By sports like these are all their cares beguiled ; 
 The sports of children satisfy the child. ' " 
 
 " Surely, my friend," says the genial 
 Country Parson, " you will never 
 again read that couplet, so simply
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES', 199 
 
 and felicitously expressed, without 
 remembering the circumstances in 
 which it was written. Who should 
 know better than Goldsmith what 
 simple pleasures ' satisfy the child ' ?" 
 The letters of George Eliot to her 
 friends, which have been given to the 
 world in her Life by Mr. Cross, show 
 us what a beautifully suitable home- 
 life hers was. " We are delighting 
 ourselves," she says in one of them, 
 " with Ruskin's third volume, which 
 contains some of the finest writing 
 I have read for a long time (among 
 recent books). I read it aloud for an 
 hour or so after dinner ; then we 
 jump to the old dramatists, when 
 Mr. Lewes reads to me as long as 
 his voice will hold out, and after this 
 we wind up the evening with Rymer 
 Jones's Animal Kingdom, by which I 
 get a confused knowledge of bran- 
 chiae and such things perhaps, on 
 the whole, a little preferable to total
 
 200 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 ignorance. These are our nodes 
 without cence, for the present occa- 
 sionally diversified by very dramatic 
 singing of Figaro, etc." 
 
 Sometimes a meeting of the kind 
 of which we write is instructive, as 
 indicating the interest taken by an 
 old sage in a young, aspiring in- 
 dividual. Although, in numerous 
 cases, a man is able to trace the 
 great and abiding influences which 
 swoop down upon his life and 
 overpower it for good, to the printed 
 pages of some virile author, yet we 
 often find in actual life that the 
 influence of man on man, more 
 especially of man on youth, is incal- 
 culable. Now and then, even a stray 
 thought, uttered in a nonchalant 
 manner, has immense power over 
 the future years of the listener.* 
 
 * We need hardly say that, in spite of the truth 
 contained in it, we do not altogether agree with 
 Douglas JerrolcTs saying that nothing is so bene-
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 201 
 
 It is said that Whittier, the 
 American poet, still dwells upon the 
 singular pleasure he got out of the 
 first sight of his poems printed in 
 the " Poet's Corner " of the county 
 newspaper which belonged to Wil- 
 liam Lloyd Garrison. That Garri- 
 son also found pleasure in them is 
 evident from the following, for which 
 we are indebted to Whittier's bio- 
 grapher, Francis H. Underwood : 
 
 " One day, when he was hoeing in 
 the corn-field in the summer of 1826, 
 word came that a carriage had driven 
 up to the house, and that the visitor 
 had inquired for one John Greenleaf 
 Whittier. The youth hastened to- 
 wards the house in great astonishment, 
 and entered the back-door because 
 he was not presentable, having on 
 neither coat, waistcoat, nor shoes 
 
 ficial to a young author as the advice of a man 
 whose judgment stands continually at freezing 
 point.
 
 202 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 only a shirt, pantaloons, and straw- 
 hat. Who could have driven out to 
 see him ? After being shod and 
 apparelled, his heart still in a flutter, 
 he appeared before the stranger, who 
 proved to be Garrison. The good 
 sister Mary, it appeared, had re- 
 vealed the secret of the authorship 
 of the poems, and the generous 
 young editor had come from New- 
 buryport on a friendly visit. We 
 can imagine how the praise affected 
 the poet ; for the manner and tones 
 of Garrison were always hearty, and 
 often very tender, and conveyed 
 an impression of absolute sincerity. 
 His position as editor gave weight 
 also to his words. To be sure, the 
 Free Press was a local newspaper, 
 and in one sense obscure ; but it 
 was conducted with ability and 
 conscience, and it reached the best 
 readers in the county. For a young 
 man who had never left his father's
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 203 
 
 farm this was a recognition unex- 
 pected and overwhelming. It was a 
 glimpse of fame. 
 
 " The father was called in, and the 
 prospects of the son discussed the 
 father remonstrating against ' put- 
 ting notions in his son's head.' With 
 warm words Garrison set forth the 
 capabilities which the early verses 
 indicated, and urged that the youth 
 be sent to some public institution for 
 such a training as his talents de- 
 manded. This clear and intelligent 
 counsel made a deep impression, 
 although at first the obstacles seemed 
 insuperable. The father had not the 
 money for the purpose ; the farm did 
 not produce more than enough for 
 the necessary expenses of the family. 
 But the son pondered upon the 
 matter, and determined to make 
 every effort to secure a higher and 
 more complete education. A way 
 was opened for him that very year
 
 204 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 not by charity or loan, but by the 
 labour of his own hands. A young 
 man, who worked for the elder 
 Whittier on the farm in summer, 
 used to make ladies' shoes and 
 slippers during the winter. Seeing 
 the desire of young Whittier to earn 
 money for his schooling, he offered 
 to instruct him in the ' mystery.' 
 The youth eagerly accepted the offer, 
 and during the following season he 
 earned enough to pay for a suit of 
 clothes and for his board and tuition 
 for six months." 
 
 Whilst in Edinburgh Burns was 
 invited to the house of Dr. Adam 
 Ferguson to meet some celebrated 
 men of letters and science. In one 
 of the rooms he found a picture of a 
 dead soldier in the snow, with his 
 widow and child on one side, and his 
 dog on the other. He was so touched 
 by this picture that he wept. Beneath 
 the print were some lines, and, turn-
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 205 
 
 ing to the company, he asked whose 
 they were. No one seemed to know ; 
 but at last a lame boy of sixteen said 
 they were by Langhorne, and men- 
 tioned the poem from which they 
 were taken. Burns, fixing a look of 
 half-serious interest on the youth, 
 said : " You'll be a man yet, sir !" 
 The boy was Walter Scott, and he 
 always remembered the incident with 
 pleasure. 
 
 In the spring of 1787 Burns and 
 Professor Stewart sometimes went 
 out walking in the morning on the 
 Braid Hills which overlook Edin- 
 burgh. The Professor, speaking of 
 the poet, says that on these occasions 
 " he charmed me still more by his 
 private conversation than he had 
 ever done in company." Once when 
 they were admiring the distant pro- 
 spect, Burns told his companion 
 " that the sight of so many smoking 
 cottages gave a pleasure to his mind
 
 206 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 which none could understand who 
 had not witnessed, like himself, the 
 happiness and the worth they con- 
 tained."* 
 
 Of a surety, as Mr. Strachey says 
 in his Introduction to the Mermaid 
 edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, " in 
 
 * Ruskin writes of the Savoyard peasants, in an 
 altogether different mood, in his Modern Painters. 
 " Is it not," he queries, "strange to reflect, that 
 hardly an evening passes in London or Paris, but 
 one of those cottages is painted for the better 
 amusement of the fair and idle, and shaded with 
 pasteboard pines by the scene-shifter ; and that 
 good and kind people poetically minded delight 
 themselves in imagining the happy life led by 
 peasants who dwell by Alpine fountains, and kneel 
 to crosses upon peaks of rock ? that nightly we 
 lay down our gold, to fashion forth simulacra of 
 peasants, in gay ribands and white bodices, singing 
 sweet songs, and bowing gracefully to the pictur- 
 esque crosses? And all the while the veritable 
 peasants are kneeling songlessly, to veritable 
 crosses, in another temper than the kind and fair 
 audiences deem of, and assuredly with another 
 kind of answer than is got out of the opera 
 catastrophe." 
 
 " All testifies that (to the Savoyard peasant) the 
 world is labour and vanity ; that for him neither 
 flowers bloom, nor birds sing, nor fountains glisten ; 
 and that his soul hardly differs from the gray cloud 
 that coils and dies upon his hills, except in having 
 no fold of it touched by the sunbeams."
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 207 
 
 the whole range of English literature, 
 search it from Chaucer till to-day, 
 there is no figure more fascinating or 
 more worthy of attention than * the 
 mysterious double personality ' of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher." 
 
 Of the life that Beaumont and 
 Fletcher led in London while work- 
 ing together we know nothing that is 
 positive, and so our imagination has 
 free scope to give them what meet- 
 ings we may in the shape of confer- 
 ences of friendly aid, by suggestion 
 or by absolute work. Speculation, 
 however rife, will never be able to 
 say, whilst pointing its finger at their 
 plays, that this thought or that ex- 
 pression came from the one or the 
 other ; and so we are content to 
 leave it. 
 
 Referring to their friendship with 
 another notable writer of plays, 
 Dryden, in his Essay of Dramatic 
 Poetry, says : " Beaumont especially
 
 208 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 being so accurate a judge of plays, 
 Ben Jonson, while he lived, sub- 
 mitted all his writings to his censure, 
 and, 'tis thought, used his judgment 
 in correcting, if not in contriving, all 
 his plots. What value he had for 
 him appears by the verses he wrote 
 to him, and therefore I need speak 
 no further of it." How deep the 
 truth lies in this statement it is diffi- 
 cult to determine nowadays ;* and 
 we are all too busy just at present 
 endeavouring to prove that Bacon 
 was Shakespeare and Shakespeare 
 nobody, to bother about such a 
 minor matter as that of Beaumont 
 instructing Ben Jonson what to put 
 into his plays, and how to put it. 
 We are not, however, too busy to 
 
 * "Nor is it possible for me to go into the in- 
 teresting facts which seem to show that it was 
 through a common friendship with Ben Jonson, 
 perhaps through a kindred admiration for the 
 poet's masterpiece, Volpone, to which play both 
 contributed commendatory verses, that the com- 
 rade poets first became acquainted." J. St. Loe 
 Strachey.
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 209 
 
 remember that " rare Ben " once 
 shouted " Boo " to a goose ! 
 
 There is less mystery about the 
 literary partnership of Addison and 
 Steele. The story of their work in 
 the periodicals in which, as Mr. 
 Morley says, the people of England 
 learned to read, is now embedded in 
 our literature. When Steele, on the 
 completion of the last paper of the 
 seventh volume of the Spectator, made 
 mention of those who had assisted 
 him in keeping up the spirit of his 
 " long and approved performance," he 
 gave an especial place to Addison, 
 " the gentleman of whose assistance 
 I formerly boasted in the preface and 
 concluding leaf of my Tatlers" " I 
 am, indeed," continued Steele, " much 
 more proud of his long -continued 
 friendship than I should be of the 
 fame of being thought the author of 
 any writings which he himself is 
 capable of producing. I remember 
 
 14
 
 210 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 when I finished The Tender Husband 
 I told him there was nothing I so 
 ardently wished as that we might 
 sometime or other publish a work 
 written by us both, which should bear 
 the name of The Monument, in memory 
 of our friendship." 
 
 What more enduring monument 
 to their friendship could possibly 
 have been erected than the seven 
 volumes of the Spectator ? 
 
 The tale of the literary partnership 
 of Mr. Walter Besant and the late 
 James Rice has been told by the 
 former in his preface to the library 
 edition of Ready-Money Mortiboy. It 
 appears that Mr. Besant went to 
 the office of Once-a-Week to secure 
 remuneration for an article of his 
 which had appeared in its pages, as 
 well as to obtain some kind of an 
 explanation of a number of exasperat- 
 ing mistakes which had found their 
 way into it as it stood in print. Mr.
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 211 
 
 Besant says he found the editor 
 " a friendly and pleasant creature, 
 anxious to set himself right " with 
 him. This "friendly and pleasant 
 creature " was James Rice, who 
 ultimately joined energies with Mr. 
 Besant ; and, as a result, we have 
 that brilliant series of novels with 
 which their names will be lovingly 
 associated for many a year to come. 
 
 The story of the authorship of The 
 Gilded Age, the joint production of 
 Charles Dudley Warner and " Mark 
 Twain," is thus related : The two 
 men were one day strolling together 
 in the garden of which Warner has 
 written so pleasantly in My Summer 
 in a Garden, when Clemens suggested 
 that they should jointly write a bur- 
 lesque of the popular American novel. 
 It was agreed upon, and the work 
 commenced at once ; but after four 
 chapters had been written, they de- 
 cided that the subject would not 
 
 142
 
 212 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 admit of such extended treatment, 
 and proposed to make the work a 
 regular story, each writing a chapter 
 alternately, until it was finished. 
 
 A hand that has promptly followed 
 a teeming brain, and done good work 
 in literature, can, it need hardly be 
 said, do further good work in the 
 same cause by helping to lift up a 
 struggling brother of the pen to his 
 proper standing-place in the republic 
 of letters. And yet how many have 
 had to bury their good-nature and 
 smother their brotherly feeling at the 
 recollection of the efforts of this kind 
 which have been wasted in the past ! 
 In literature, alas ! the old story of 
 the ugly duckling is reversed ; instead 
 of the much-abused duckling turning 
 out to be the proverbial swan, the 
 would-be swan generally proves to be 
 a little fool of a duck, and a poor 
 thing at that. Of course, there are 
 exceptions, and now and then one
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 213 
 
 actually does find that the writer who 
 starts in a heavy, elephantine manner 
 has, after all, genius of a kind at 
 bottom, and ultimately does work of 
 which the world is genuinely proud ; 
 but far oftener our attention is drawn 
 to a showy dashing character, spark- 
 ling with affected Bohemianism, and 
 of doubtful morals, loose collar, glib 
 tongue, and self-assumed genius, who 
 soon gets wiped off the literary record 
 as a failure and a fraud. Too often, 
 the fixed star proves to be but a 
 "farthing rush-light." 
 
 If a successful literary man does 
 seriously wish to turn from his course 
 and live a life of self-sacrifice, let him 
 be advertised as of a friendly dis- 
 position and willing to teach others 
 the secret of success in letters. Let 
 him distribute broadcast scraps of 
 his autobiography, bristling with tales 
 (they needn't be too true !) of the 
 monetary reward of literary produc-
 
 214 BEPIIND THE SCENES. 
 
 tions novels, poems (poems especi- 
 ally !), theological treatises (certainly!), 
 heart-confessions, etc., etc. and his 
 life-work will make rapid descent 
 ilpon him. He may build barns 
 round about his great estate, window- 
 blinded after the style of lawyers' 
 offices and banks, one blind marked 
 "Poems Religious," another "Poems 
 Sentimental," and so on ; and the 
 manuscripts which shall flood in upon 
 him for his "considerate perusal," 
 "confidential advice," "friendly help 
 in publishing," and " brotherly sym- 
 pathy and tears," shall so fill his 
 barns that, unless his years have 
 promise of being unduly prolonged 
 to seventy times three-score and ten, 
 he had better insure the premises, set 
 fire to the whole concern, and then, 
 like the foolish man in the Scriptures, 
 arise and build on a more ambitious 
 scale. He should have estimates sent 
 him from manufacturing stationers
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 215 
 
 for the wholesale supply of all kinds 
 of necessary material. Talk about a 
 life of self-denial ! that of the veriest 
 pillar-poser of ascetic ages would fade 
 into foolishness and bye -word ism 
 compared with his ! 
 
 Beware, then, O sane reader, of 
 ever encouraging a man in scribbling ! 
 Flee rather for peace to the uncanny 
 wilds of the land of She. Many a 
 dabbler in unholy mysteries hath 
 before now raised a throng of devils 
 about him that would not be dis- 
 pelled, but, hanging on to the last, 
 have even danced upon the unfortu- 
 nate meddler's corpse. 
 
 Yet instances of timely assistance 
 stand out now and then, clean-cut 
 and definite, and laugh to scorn 
 the theories which tend to make 
 a man hesitate before giving his 
 assistance to the multiplying of 
 books, of which there is, verily, no 
 end.
 
 21 6 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 " I received one morning," said 
 Dr. Johnson, whilst speaking of the 
 Vicar of Wakefield, " a message from 
 poor Goldsmith, that he was in great 
 distress, and, as it was not in his 
 power to come to me, begging that I 
 would come to him as soon as possible. 
 I sent him a guinea, and promised to 
 come directly. I accordingly went 
 as soon as I was drest, and found 
 that his landlady had arrested him 
 for his rent, at which he was in 
 a violent passion. I perceived that 
 he had already changed my guinea, 
 and had got a bottle of Madeira and 
 a glass before him. I put the cork 
 into the bottle, desired he would be 
 calm, and began to talk to him of the 
 means by which he might be extri- 
 cated. He then told me that he had 
 a novel ready for the press, which he 
 produced to me. I looked into it, 
 and saw its merit ; told the landlady 
 I should soon return, and, having
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 217 
 
 gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty 
 pounds." 
 
 Later on, when in comparatively 
 easy circumstances, Goldsmith used 
 to give dinners to Johnson, Percy, 
 Reynolds, Bickerstaff, and other 
 friends of note, and supper-parties 
 to young folks of both sexes. Black- 
 stone, whose chambers were imme- 
 diately below Goldsmith's, was at 
 that time studiously occupied on his 
 Commentaries, and used to complain 
 of the racket made by his " revelling 
 neighbour." 
 
 We all know the story of the first 
 meeting of Thackeray and " Currer 
 Bell," and the annoyance experienced 
 by the lady at the premature an- 
 nouncement that she wasn't a man 
 after all. W. D. Howells has told to 
 an interviewer the following story, 
 which forms a curious parallel, but 
 only inasmuch as it has to do with
 
 2i8 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 another discovery of female person- 
 ality under manly disguise: " My first 
 meeting with Miss Murfree (author 
 of The Prophet of the Great Smoky 
 Mountains) was," he said, " very droll. 
 She had been writing for the A tlantic 
 Monthly a couple of years. One day 
 Osgood dropped in at my library. 
 ' Craddock's in town,' said he ; 'he 
 will dine with me to-night. Can't 
 you join us at dinner?' I told Osgood 
 I had an engagement for that night, 
 but would surely put in an appear- 
 ance, if only for a few minutes. You 
 see, it had never occurred to any of 
 us that ' Craddock ' was not a man, 
 and I had often given free rein to my 
 fancy in imagining how he would look 
 and act. After Osgood left me he 
 hunted up Aldrich, and told him 
 about it, and Aldrich said nothing 
 but death would prevent him being 
 present, for if there was one man in 
 the world he wanted to see it was
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 219 
 
 Craddock. Then Osgood told Law- 
 rence Barrett about it, and Barrett 
 promised to be there too. It so hap- 
 pened that I was the first of the men 
 to arrive, I saw two strange ladies 
 in the drawing-room, but no Crad- 
 dock. Osgood enjoyed my disap- 
 pointment a moment, and then he 
 said : ' Mr. Howells, let me present 
 you to Miss M. N. Murfree, whom 
 we all know as Charles Egbert Crad- 
 dock.' The other lady was Miss 
 Murfree's sister. Of course, I was 
 greatly surprised, and they all laughed 
 heartily at my confusion. There was 
 more laughter when Aldrich came 
 in, and then we waited to see how 
 Barrett would take it. I think he 
 was the most nonplussed man I ever 
 saw ; he could do nothing for a few 
 moments but grin yes, actually grin ! 
 Think of it ! that model of elegance 
 and dignity grinning ! But he did it, 
 and he stammered and hesitated so
 
 220 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 when he attempted to speak, that the 
 entire party roared until their sides 
 ached." 
 
 Dickens, in the Memoir prefixed to 
 Adelaide Procter's Legends and Lyrics, 
 relates the following incident : 
 
 " Happening one day to dine with 
 an old and dear friend, distinguished 
 in literature as ' Barry Cornwall,' I 
 took with me an early proof of the 
 Christmas number of Household 
 Words, entitled The Seven Poor Tra- 
 vellers, and remarked, as I laid it on 
 the drawing-room table, that it con- 
 tained a very pretty poem, written 
 by a certain Miss Berwick. Next 
 day brought me a disclosure that I 
 had so spoken of the poem to the 
 mother of the writer, in the writer's 
 presence ; that I had no such corre- 
 spondent in existence as Miss Ber- 
 wick ; and that the name had been 
 assumed by Barry Cornwall's daugh- 
 ter, Miss Adelaide Anne Procter !"
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 221 
 
 The secret of the authorship of the 
 Waverley Novels was well kept by 
 Scott for some time. Procter re- 
 lates the following instance to show 
 the power of self-command pos- 
 sessed by Scott. It occurred at a 
 breakfast in Haydon's studio. 
 " Charles Lamb and Hazlitt and 
 various other people were there, and 
 the conversation turned on the 
 vraisemblance of certain dramatis per- 
 sona in a modern book. Sir Walter's 
 opinion was asked. ' Well,' replied 
 he, ' they are as true as the per- 
 sonages in Waverley and Guy Man- 
 nering are, I think.' This was long 
 before he had confessed that he was 
 the author of the Scotch novels, and 
 when much curiosity was alive on 
 the subject. I looked very steadily 
 into his face as he spoke, but it did 
 not betray any consciousness or sup- 
 pressed humour. His command of 
 countenance was perfect."
 
 VIII. 
 
 NOT THROUGH INTELLECT 
 ALONE. 
 
 " So let me sing of names remembered, 
 
 Because they, living not, can ne'er be dead." 
 WILLIAM MORRIS: " The Earthly Paradise. " 
 
 SOME remarkable interviews took 
 place between Goethe and Schiller. 
 When they first made each other's 
 personal acquaintance, Schiller was 
 not altogether favourably impressed 
 by Goethe, whose flow of brilliant 
 talk of Italy, travelling, art, and a 
 thousand - and - one other subjects 
 rather oppressed the younger poet. 
 And besides, Schiller's views on 
 some of these topics were out of
 
 NOT THRO UGH INTELLECT A LONE. 223 
 
 sympathy with Goethe's, and yet he 
 knew not how to contradict him. 
 Of this interview Schiller writes to 
 Korner in 1788 : " At last I can tell 
 you about Goethe, and satisfy your 
 curiosity. . . . On the whole, I must 
 say that my great idea of him is not 
 lessened by this personal acquaint- 
 ance ; but I doubt whether we shall 
 ever become intimate. Much that to 
 me is of great interest he has already 
 lived through; he is, less in years 
 than in experience and self-culture, 
 so far beyond me, that we can never 
 meet on the way ; his whole being is 
 originally different from mine, his 
 world is not my world, our concep- 
 tions are radically different. Time 
 will show." 
 
 And time did show, and drew 
 these two men together by great 
 bonds of friendship so great, that 
 when news of Schiller's death came 
 to the Goethe household, no one had
 
 224 NOT THROUGH INTELLECT ALONE. 
 
 heart stout enough to tell it to the 
 master. He, however, suspected 
 something, and said : 
 
 " Ah, I see ; Schiller must be very 
 ill." 
 
 After a night, in which he was 
 heard weeping bitterly, he arose and 
 said to a friend : 
 
 " Is it not true that Schiller was 
 very ill yesterday ?" 
 
 For reply he had nothing but 
 sobs. 
 
 " He is dead !" murmured Goethe. 
 
 " You have said it," was the sob- 
 bing answer. 
 
 "Dead!" repeated Goethe. "He 
 is dead /" and he covered his face 
 with his hands. 
 
 Subsequently he confessed to a 
 friend that he felt as if half his exist- 
 ence had been ruthlessly torn from 
 him. His diary at the time was left 
 a blank, the white pages intimating 
 the vacancy of his life.
 
 NOT THROUGH INTELLECT ALONE. 225 
 
 Years afterwards, whilst on a visit 
 with Eckermann to the pleasant little 
 arbour at Jena, where he and his 
 dead friend used to sit and talk, he 
 said : 
 
 " Here it was that Schiller dwelt. 
 In this arbour, upon these benches, 
 which are now almost broken, we 
 have often passed the hours ; at this 
 old stone table we have often ex- 
 changed many good and great words. 
 He was then in the thirties, I in the 
 forties ; both were full of high aspira- 
 tions, and, indeed, it was something 
 to speak about. Everything passes 
 away ; I am no more what I was ; 
 but the old earth remains, and air, 
 water, and land are still the same." 
 
 " No two men," said Carlyle, 
 speaking of Goethe and Schiller, 
 "both of exalted genius, could be 
 possessed of more different sorts of 
 excellence. . . . The English reader 
 may form some approximate esti- 
 
 15
 
 226 NOT THROUGH INTELLECT ALONE. 
 
 mate of the contrast by figuring an 
 interview between Shakespeare and 
 Milton. How gifted ; how diverse 
 in their gifts ! The mind of the one 
 plays calmly, in its capricious and 
 inimitable graces, over all the pro- 
 vinces of human interest ; the other 
 concentrates powers as vast, but far 
 less various, on a few subjects. The 
 one is catholic ; the other sectarian. 
 Goethe is endowed with an all-com- 
 prehending spirit ; skilled, as if by 
 personal experience, in all the modes 
 of human passion and opinion ; there- 
 fore tolerant of all, peaceful, collected, 
 fighting for no class of men or ideas. 
 Schiller is earnest, devoted ; struggling 
 with a thousand mighty projects of 
 improvement ; feeling more intensely 
 as he feels more narrowly ; rejecting 
 vehemently, choosing vehemently ; 
 at war with the one half of things, in 
 love with the other half ; hence dis- 
 satisfied, impetuous, without internal
 
 JV07 THROUGH INTELLECT ALONE. 227 
 
 rest, and scarcely conceiving the pos- 
 sibility of such a state." 
 
 For lovers of books I can think 
 of no more pleasing interview than 
 that which took place between 
 Petrarch and Richard de Bury. 
 Petrarch was not only a poet ; he 
 was a lover of books, and in his way 
 a great collector. De Bury's book- 
 loving and book-collecting propen- 
 sities were very pronounced, as we 
 all know. What common ground, 
 then, for conversation ! How De 
 Bury's eyes must have glistened, and 
 his heart warmed, as Petrarch ex- 
 hibited his precious manuscripts one 
 after the other ! Petrarch, by the 
 way, was too good-natured by far; 
 his books were always at the service 
 of his friends, and, although some 
 were returned in due course, others 
 got astray in a mysterious fashion. 
 A magnificent manuscript of Cicero's 
 De Gloria was even pawned by 
 
 152
 
 228 NOT THRO UGH INTELLECT A LONE. 
 
 one who had borrowed it of the 
 poet. 
 
 But 'tis to the friendship which 
 existed between Petrarch and Boc- 
 caccio that we turn our broadest 
 human sympathies. Francis Hueffer, 
 in an article entitled A Literary 
 Friendship of the Fourteenth Century, 
 gives us a pleasing account of how 
 the inner life of the one was bound 
 to that of the other. They seem 
 both to have had an early experience 
 of failure in things worldly, which 
 really has not been phenomenal with 
 men of genius through the ages. 
 Petrarch was the son of a notary, 
 and Boccaccio of a merchant ; and 
 they were both brought up to the 
 fathers' callings. But neither of 
 them showed taste or talent for the 
 practical pursuits of life. Boccaccio's 
 master sent back his idle clerk in 
 despair after six years' apprentice- 
 ship, and an equal term spent by
 
 ,VOT THRO UGH INTELLECT A LONE. 229 
 
 Petrarch in the study of the law was 
 counted by him as an utter and irre- 
 trievable loss of time. 
 
 Their friendship, when it came 
 about later in their lives, had nothing 
 hollow and mocking about it. The 
 power and purse of each were at the 
 command of the other to use as he 
 would. For our present purpose, 
 however, we must pass the years by 
 until they bring us to the messenger 
 Boccaccio, visiting Petrarch with 
 complimentary offers from Florence 
 of a chair in the University. " Boc- 
 caccio remained with Petrarch," 
 says Mr. Hueffer, " for some time, 
 and the account he has given of his 
 visit conveys a pleasant idea of the 
 genial, unceremonious intercourse of 
 the two friends. Even for such a 
 guest Petrarch would not interrupt 
 his studies, and Boccaccio himself 
 began at once to copy the most im- 
 portant works of his friend, the pos-
 
 230 NOT THROUGH INTELLECT ALONE. 
 
 session of which had been the goal 
 of his wishes for a long time. But 
 after their work, in the evenings, the 
 two friends used to meet in a little 
 orchard, beautiful with the blossoms 
 of spring, and communicate to each 
 other the ideas nearest and dearest 
 to their hearts."
 
 IX. 
 CAMPING OUT. 
 
 "... the fires of vagabondage which smoulder 
 beneath the surface of most men's conventionalisms 
 which mountain ami river and winds had liberated 
 and fanned. . . . Deep in our hearts wt hide 
 the diminished flame, and brood above it with 
 memories of forest and mere." J. CHAPMAN 
 WOODS. 
 
 WHITTIER gives us an attractive 
 picture in his poem, The Tent on the 
 Beach, of three literary friends, who 
 
 " When heats as of a tropic clime 
 
 Burned all our inland valleys through, 
 
 
 
 Pitched their white tents where sea-winds 
 blew. 
 
 " They rested there, escaped awhile 
 
 From cares that wear the life away, 
 To eat the lotus of the Nile 
 
 And drink the poppies of Cathay
 
 232 CAMPING OUT. 
 
 To fling their loads of custom down, 
 Like drift-weed on the sand-slopes brown, 
 And in the sea-waves drown the restless pack 
 Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their 
 track." 
 
 These three friends, Whittier, Fields, 
 and Bayard Taylor, have quite a 
 Bohemian time of it, hearing 
 
 " The bells of morn and night 
 Swing, miles away, their silver speech." 
 
 Our readers at least, the few of 
 them who know not Whittier must 
 go to the poem for the stories; just 
 here the Quaker-poet shall give us 
 only the portraits of the " com- 
 panions three " : 
 
 " One,* with his beard scarce silvered, bore 
 
 A rea'ly credence in his looks, 
 A lettered magnate, lording o'er 
 
 An ever-widening realm of books. 
 In him brain-currents, near and far, 
 Converged as in a Leyden jar ; 
 The old, dead authors thronged him round about, 
 And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves 
 looked out. 
 
 " Pleasant it WHS to roam about 
 
 The lettered world as he had done, 
 
 * J. T. Fields.
 
 CAMPING OUT. 233 
 
 And see the lords of song without 
 
 Their singing robes and garlands on : 
 With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere, 
 Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer, 
 And with the ears of Rogers at fourscore, 
 Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit 
 once more." 
 
 Whittier draws his own picture : 
 
 " And one there was a dreamer born, 
 
 Who, with a mission to fulfil, 
 Had left the Muses' haunts to turn 
 
 The crank of an opinion mill, 
 Making his rustic reed of song 
 A weapon in the war with wrong, 
 Yoking his fancy to the breaking plough 
 That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring 
 and grow. 
 
 " For while he wrought with strenuous will 
 
 The work his hands had found to do, 
 He heard the fitful music still 
 
 Of winds that out of dreamland blew. 
 The din about him could not drown 
 What the strange voices whispered down ; 
 Along his task-field weird processions swept, 
 The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped. 
 
 " The common air was thick with dreams 
 
 He told them to the toiling crowd ; 
 Such music as the woods and streams 
 Sang in his ear he sang aloud." 
 
 Bayard Taylor was the 
 
 " One whose Arab face was tanned 
 By tropic sun and boreal frost, 
 So travelled there was scarce a land 
 Or people left him to exhaust,
 
 234 CAMPING OUT. 
 
 In idling mood had from him hurled 
 The poor squeezed orange of the world, 
 And in the tent-shade, as beneath a palm, 
 Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental 
 calm. 
 
 " The very waves that washed the sand 
 
 Below him he had seen before 
 Whitening the Scandinavian strand 
 
 And sultry Mauritanian shore. 
 From ice-rimmed isles, from summer seas, 
 Palm-fringed, they bore him messages ; 
 He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again, 
 And mule-bells tinkling down the mountain-paths 
 of Spain."
 
 X. 
 
 A PASSING GLIMPSE. 
 
 " I yield the palm to no man's love I but others 
 loved thet first." 
 
 I WONDER what particular associa- 
 tions were present in the mind of 
 Hawthorne, as he strolled about 
 London with his friend Bennock in 
 search of Johnson's old haunts ! 
 Were the worthy doctor's pompous 
 phrases coursing through his mind ?* 
 or did he recollect the fact that one 
 
 * "A fine day," said Sir Joshua Reynolds to 
 Dr. "Johnson. 
 
 " Sir," he answered, " it seems propitious, but 
 the atmosphere is humid and the skies are nebu- 
 lous." 
 
 Any recorded conversations with Johnson always 
 make me think of the interesting question of the 
 languid young lady who wished to ring the tea-
 
 236 A PASSING GLIMPSE. 
 
 night in particular Savage and 
 Johnson walked round and about St. 
 James's Square for want of a lodging, 
 and were not at all depressed at 
 their situation, but, in high spirits 
 and brimful of patriotism, traversed 
 the square for several hours ? Only 
 a few years after this homeless night, 
 and Johnson stood, a literary Colos- 
 sus, on the enduring pedestal of fame, 
 and Savage, a murderer and a pro- 
 fligate, ended his miserable career in 
 Bristol gaol. 
 
 But Boswell, as leader of all writers 
 on Johnson, has done his work so 
 
 bell. " If I agitate the communicator," she asked, 
 " will the domestic appear ?" 
 
 The following is certainly an excellent imitation 
 of the style of the worthy doctor : 
 
 " What is a window ?" asked an earnest seeker 
 after knowledge. 
 
 " A window, sir," replied Johnson," is an orifice 
 cut out of an edifice for the introduction of illu- 
 mination." 
 
 " Thank you; will you be good enough to snuff 
 the candle?" 
 
 " Sir, you ought rather to say, deprive that 
 luminary of its superfluous eminence."
 
 A PASSING GLIMPSE. 237 
 
 thoroughly that it were folly for us 
 to repeat here any of the well-known 
 stories of the great man which have 
 become embedded in our literature. 
 And, besides, an oak-tree is out of 
 place in the tiny beds of a close-cut 
 lawn. Dwarf plants should be there, 
 with an occasional rose-bush, making 
 bright bits of colour, and rilling the 
 air with sweet scents. Let the big 
 tree flourish in some neighbouring 
 field, where it has room to throw out 
 its mighty roots and branches ! 
 
 Shelley certainly is not one of our 
 oak-trees of literature ; but, thanks 
 to the present revival of interest in 
 him, both as a man and a poet, 
 his personality has become so pro- 
 nounced that we all know him 
 some will perhaps have it, even 
 better than he knew himself and 
 so we linger here but for a moment 
 to bestow on him a passing look of 
 sad farewell. In spirit we bend
 
 238 A PASSING GLIMPSE. 
 
 our heads with Byron, Hunt, and 
 Trelawny* over the body of the dead 
 poet, lying on the Tuscan coast, 
 about to be reduced to ashes. " A 
 furnace was provided, of iron bars 
 and strong sheet-iron, with fuel, 
 and frankincense, wine, salt and 
 oil, the accompaniments of a Grecian 
 cremation : the volume of Keats was 
 burned along with the body. It was 
 a glorious day, and a splendid pros- 
 pect the cruel and calm sea before, 
 the Apennines behind. A curlew 
 wheeled close to the pyre, screaming, 
 and would not be driven away ; the 
 flame arose golden and towering." 
 And so we pass on, with chastened 
 soul and sad heart, leaving Hunt 
 and Byron behind. The world has 
 been robbed of a dreamer ! 
 
 * " To hear Trelawny speak of Shelley," said 
 Swinburne, " is beautiful and touching ; at that 
 name his voice (usually that of an old sea-king, as 
 he is) always changes and softens unconsciously. 
 ' There,' he said to me, ' was the very best of 
 men, and he was treated as the very worst.' "
 
 XI. 
 A GIANT IN THE PATH. 
 
 " In the centre of all, and object of all, stands 
 the Human Being, towards -whose heroic and 
 spiritual evolution poems and everything directly 
 or indirectly tend." WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 THE grim persistency of Carlyle 
 the dogged determination which 
 enabled him to overcome obstacles 
 which would have taken the life out 
 of most men, appears to have been 
 in a measure characteristic of the 
 Carlyle family. In his Reminiscences 
 of Carlyle, Mr. A. J. Symington tells 
 the following story, which will speak 
 for itself: 
 
 " While walking in Rotten Row, 
 he (Carlyle) told me how his brother
 
 240 A GIANT IN THE PATH. 
 
 John, who had been twenty years in 
 Italy, as physician to the Duke of 
 Buccleuch, had amassed an enormous 
 amount of Dante material towards 
 executing a prose translation. For 
 long he had unsuccessfully urged his 
 brother to set about it ; but, urge 
 and progue as he would, he could 
 not get him to begin. So he resolved 
 on trying quite another plan, and 
 bethought him of the man who was 
 driving pigs to Killarney, and who 
 told his friend to hush and speak low, 
 for the pigs thought he wanted them 
 to go the other way. This story he 
 told with great animation, standing 
 still the while, and acting it inimit- 
 ably, saying, after he had finished : 
 ' That is how I got John to begin his 
 translation, and thus it came about. 
 One day said I : " John, man, if I 
 were in your shoes, I would get quit 
 of that Dante business, which hangs 
 about your neck like a dead albatross.
 
 A GIANT IN THE PATH. 241 
 
 Cast it away from you, and give up 
 all thought of ever translating Dante. 
 If you had been a young man, you 
 might have looked forward to over- 
 taking it ; but now you are too old. 
 Read and enjoy yourself, and bother 
 your head no more about Dante." 
 
 " The steel struck fire," said 
 Carlyle, " as was intended. John 
 exclaimed : ' Me too old ! I'm nothing 
 of the kind !' And, so, forthwith, he 
 set to work, and produced one of 
 the very best translations of Dante 
 to be found anywhere." 
 
 When Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen 
 visited Turgenieff in Paris some 
 years ago, they fell talking of Carlyle. 
 Turgenieff related that once he visited 
 the Chelsea sage, and found him 
 loud in his denunciation of democ- 
 racy, and very unreserved in his 
 expression of sympathy with Russia 
 and her Emperor. 
 
 " This grand moving of great 
 
 16
 
 242 A GIANT IN THE PATH. 
 
 masses swayed by one powerful hand, 
 brings," he said, " uniformity and 
 purpose into history. In a country 
 like Great Britain, it was wearisome 
 to see how every petty individual 
 could thrust forth his head, like a 
 frog out of its swamp, and croak 
 away at his contemptible sentiment 
 as long as anybody had a mind to 
 listen to him. Such a state of things 
 could only result in confusion and 
 disorder." 
 
 Turgenieff told Carlyle in reply 
 that he should only ask him to go to 
 Russia and spend a month or two in 
 one of the interior governments, just 
 long enough to observe with his own 
 eyes the effect of this much-admired 
 despotism. Then, he thought, he 
 would need no word of his to convince 
 him. 
 
 One day Carlyle met Browning, 
 and wished to say something pleasant 
 about The Ring and the Book; but
 
 A GIANT IN THE PATH. 243 
 
 somehow he got sadly mixed, with 
 the result that what he did say was 
 not entirely a compliment. " It is a 
 wonderful book," he said ; " one of 
 the most wonderful poems ever 
 written. I re-read it all through 
 all made out of an Old Bailey story, 
 that might have been told in ten 
 lines, and only wants forgetting." 
 
 16 2
 
 XII. 
 
 "FOUND AGAIN IN THE 
 HEART OF A FRIEND." 
 
 " Perhaps the best of a song heard, or of any and 
 all true love, or life's fairest episodes, or sailors', 
 soldiers trying scenes on land or sea, is the floating 
 resume of them, or any of them, long afterwards, 
 looking at the actualities away back past, with all 
 their practical excitations gone. How the soul 
 loves to hover over such reminiscences /" WALT 
 WHITMAN. 
 
 MOST of us know that charming 
 little poem of Longfellow's The 
 A rrow and the Song : 
 
 " I shot an arrow into the air, 
 It fell to earth I knew not where ; 
 For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
 Could not follow it in its flight. 
 
 " I breathed a song into the air, 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 
 For who has sight so keen and strong, 
 That it can follow the flight of song ?
 
 "IN THE HEART OF A FRIEND." 245 
 
 " Long, long afterwards, in an oak 
 I found the arrow, still unbroke ; 
 And the song from beginning to end, 
 I found again in the heart of a friend." 
 
 What pleasure a man like Words- 
 worth must have reaped when he 
 found any of his poetry embedded in 
 the memory of a friend ! 
 
 Perhaps one of the most interest- 
 ing instances of finding one's words 
 in an unlooked-for quarter is the 
 following : 
 
 " John Howard Payne, the author 
 of Home, Sweet Home, was a warm 
 personal friend of John Ross, who 
 will be remembered as the celebrated 
 chief of the Cherokees. At the time 
 the Cherokees were removed from 
 their homes in Georgia to their 
 present possessions west of the 
 Mississippi River, Payne was spend- 
 ing a few weeks in Georgia with 
 Ross, who was occupying a miserable 
 cabin, having been forcibly ejected 
 from his former home. A number
 
 246 "FOUND AGAIN IN 
 
 of the prominent Cherokees were 
 in prison, and that portion of Georgia 
 in which the tribe was located was 
 scoured by armed squads of the 
 Georgia militia, who had orders to 
 arrest all who refused to leave the 
 country. While Ross and Payne 
 were seated before the fire in the 
 hut, the door was suddenly burst 
 open and six or eight militiamen 
 sprang into the room. The soldiers 
 lost no time in taking their prisoners 
 away. Ross was permitted to ride 
 his own horse, while Payne was 
 mounted on one led by a soldier. 
 As the little party left the hovel, rain 
 began falling, and continued until 
 every man was drenched thoroughly. 
 The journey lasted all night. Towards 
 midnight, Payne's escort, in order to 
 keep himself awake, began humming 
 Home, Sweet Home, when Payne re- 
 marked : 
 
 " ' Little did I expect to hear that
 
 THE HEART OF A FRIEND." 247 
 
 song under such circumstances, and 
 at such a time. Do you know the 
 author ?' 
 
 " ' No,' said the soldier. ' Do 
 you ?" 
 
 " ' Yes,' answered Payne ; ' I com- 
 posed it.'* 
 
 " ' The devil you did ! You can 
 tell that to some fellows, but not 
 to me. Look here; you made that 
 song, you say. If you did and I 
 know you didn't you can say it all 
 without stopping. It has something 
 in it about pleasures and palaces. 
 Now, pitch in, and reel it off; and 
 if you can't, I'll bounce you from 
 your horse, and lead you instead of it.' 
 
 " The threat was answered by 
 
 * " Payne declared that he had heard the tune 
 of ffome, Sweet Home from the lips of a Sicilian 
 peasant girl, who sang it artlessly as she sold some 
 sort of Italian wares, and touched his fine ear by 
 the purity of her voice. It is pleasant to think he 
 did not crib it from an old opera, but had a certain 
 proprietorship in the air, as well as the words, of 
 the most popular song extant."
 
 Payne, who repeated the song in 
 a slow, subdued tone, and then sang 
 it, making the old woods ring with 
 the tender melody and pathos of the 
 words. It touched the heart of the 
 rough soldier, who was not only cap- 
 tivated but convinced, and who said 
 the composer of such a song should 
 never go to prison if he could help it. 
 And when the party reached Mil- 
 Jedgeville, they were, after a pre- 
 liminary examination, discharged, 
 much to their surprise. Payne in- 
 sisted it was because the leader of 
 the squad had been under the mag- 
 netic influence of Ross's conversa- 
 tion, and Ross insisted that they had 
 been saved from insult and imprison- 
 ment by the power of Home, Sweet 
 Home, sung as only those who feel 
 can sing it. The friendship existing 
 between Ross and Payne endured 
 until the grave closed over the mortal 
 remains of the latter."
 
 THE HEART OF A FRIEND." 249 
 
 " On my return home from Paris," 
 writes Hans Christian Andersen, in 
 his Story of My Life, " I went along 
 the Rhine ; I knew that in one of the 
 Rhine towns the poet Freiligrath 
 lived. The picturesque in his poems 
 pleased me very much, and I wished 
 to become acquainted with him. I 
 stopped in some towns on the Rhine, 
 and inquired after him ; in St. Gears 
 I was shown the house where he 
 lived. He was sitting at his writing- 
 table, and seemed annoyed at being 
 disturbed by a stranger. I told not 
 my name, but only that I could not 
 pass by St. Goars without paying 
 my respects to the poet Freiligrath. 
 ' That is very kind of you,' said he, 
 in a cold tone, and asked who I 
 was. When I replied : ' We both 
 have one and the same friend, 
 Chamisso,' he sprang up in an 
 ecstasy of joy. ' Andersen !' he ex- 
 claimed ; ' it is !' He flung himself
 
 250 "IN THE HEART OF A FRIEND." 
 
 on my neck, and his honest eyes 
 beamed, ' Now stay for some days 
 here,' said he. I told him that I 
 could stay only two hours, as I was 
 in company with countrymen who 
 were waiting for me. ' You have 
 many friends in little St. Goars,' said 
 he. ' I have, a short time since, read 
 out to a great circle your novel of 
 O. F. One of these friends, how- 
 ever, I must fetch here, and you 
 must also see my wife. Ay, know 
 you not yet that you have had some 
 share in our marriage ?' And now 
 he told how my novel of Only a 
 Fiddler had brought them into a 
 correspondence by letter, and, eventu- 
 ally, into an acquaintance, which 
 ended in their becoming a married 
 couple. He called her, told her my 
 name, and I was considered as an 
 old friend."
 
 XIII. 
 
 SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER 
 CAME. 
 
 " And it passed over our heads on to the haw- 
 thorn-bushes in the field across the brook." 
 
 IN a list of interviews which should 
 have taken place I certainly would 
 include one between Tennyson and 
 Landor. The invitation of the latter, 
 which we cannot find was ever ac- 
 cepted, runs thus : 
 
 " I entreat you, Alfred Tennyson, 
 Come and share my haunch of venison. 
 I have, too, a bin of claret. 
 Good, but better when you share it. 
 Tho' 'tis only a small bin, 
 There's a stock of it within. 
 And as sure as I'm a rhymer, 
 Half a butt of Rudesheimer. 
 Come ; among the sons of men is none 
 Welcomer than Alfred Tennyson."
 
 252 SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER CAME. 
 
 Tennyson and Hawthorne should 
 also have enjoyed each other's spoken, 
 word. It was a matter of regret 
 afterwards to both that one oppor- 
 tunity, at least, of so doing was 
 permitted to slip by. Hawthorne 
 thus mentions it : " While I was 
 among the Dutch painters (at the 
 Manchester Exhibition of 1857), 
 
 accosted me. He told me 
 
 that the ' Poet Laureate ' (as he 
 called him) was in the Exhibition 
 rooms, and, as I expressed great 
 interest, was kind enough to go in 
 quest of him ; not for the purpose 
 of introduction, however, for he was 
 not acquainted with Tennyson. Soon 
 
 Mr. returned, and said he had 
 
 found the Poet Laureate, and going 
 into the saloon of the Old Masters, 
 we saw him there, in company with 
 Mr. Woolner. . . . Gazing at him 
 with all my eyes, I liked him well, 
 and rejoiced more in him than in all
 
 SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER CAME. 253 
 
 the wonders of the Exhibition. . . . 
 I would gladly have seen more of 
 this one poet of our day, but forbore 
 to follow him ; for I must own that it 
 seemed mean to be dogging him 
 through the saloons, or even to look 
 at him, since it was to be done 
 stealthily, if at all." 
 
 In his Yesterdays with Authors, J. 
 T. Fields refers to this same incident. 
 " It was," he says, " during one of his 
 rambles with Alexander Ireland 
 through the Manchester Exhibition 
 rooms that Hawthorne saw Tenny- 
 son wandering about. I have always 
 thought it unfortunate that these two 
 men of genius could not have been 
 introduced on that occasion. Haw- 
 thorne was too shy to seek an intro- 
 duction, and Tennyson was not aware 
 that the American author was present. 
 Hawthorne records in his journal that 
 he gazed at Tennyson with all his 
 eyes, ' and rejoiced more in him than
 
 254 SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER CAME. 
 
 in all the other wonders of the Ex- 
 hibition.' When I afterwards told 
 Tennyson that the author whose 
 Twice-told Tales he happened to be 
 then reading at Farringford had met 
 him at Manchester, but did not make 
 himself known, the Laureate said in 
 his frank and hearty manner : ' Why 
 didn't he come up and let me shake 
 hands with him? I am sure I should 
 have been glad to meet a man like 
 Hawthorne anywhere.' " 
 
 When Samuel Rogers, the poet, 
 was a young man in his father's 
 bank, his spirit of hero-worship sug- 
 gested a visit to Dr. Johnson ; but, 
 on reaching his house in Bolt Court, 
 his courage forsook him as he was 
 about to lift the knocker. 
 
 In still more modern times I would 
 that Robert Buchanan had found 
 his way to Chelsea, and lifted the 
 knocker of a certain house wherein 
 dwelt Dante Gabriel Rossetti. We
 
 SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER CAME. 255 
 
 all know of the literary quarrel be- 
 tween these two authors, and the 
 tender verses Buchanan subsequently 
 penned to the poet-painter, followed 
 by that other lament after death had 
 closed his eyes. 
 
 What a meeting Hawthorne, with 
 the delicate kindliness of his nature, 
 has conjured up for us at the close of 
 his notice of Delia Bacon, whose 
 enthusiastic mind got disarranged 
 over her efforts to dethrone Shake- 
 speare in favour of Bacon, and who 
 ultimately became hopelessly insane ! 
 " And when, not many months after 
 the outward failure of her life-long 
 object," he writes, "she passed into 
 the better world, I know not why we 
 should hesitate to believe that the 
 immortal poet may have met her on 
 the threshold and led her in, re- 
 assuring her with friendly and com- 
 fortable words, and thanking her 
 (yet with a smile of gentle humour
 
 256 SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER CAME. 
 
 in his eyes at the thought of certain 
 mistaken speculations) for having 
 interpreted him to mankind so 
 well."* 
 
 * In a letter to Mary Cowden Clarke, con- 
 gratulating her on the completion of her Con- 
 cordance to Shakespeare, Douglas Jerrold writes : 
 " On your first arrival in Paradise you must expect 
 a kiss from Shakespeare even though your hus- 
 band should happen to be there." Some little 
 time after, in a brilliant article in Punch, on " The 
 Shakespeare Night " at Covent Garden Theatre, 
 which took place the 7th December, 1847, the 
 same delightful author, after describing the festive 
 happiness of the affair, proceeds : "At a few- 
 minutes to seven, and quite unexpectedly, William 
 Shakespeare, with his wife, the late Anne Hatha- 
 way, drove up to the private box door, drawn by 
 Pegasus, for that night only appearing in harness. 
 . . . Shakespeare was received and afterwards 
 lighted to his box by his editors, Charles Knight 
 and Payne Collier, upon both of whom the poet 
 smiled benignly ; and saying some pleasant, com- 
 mendable words to each, received from their hands 
 their two editions of his immortality. And then 
 from a corner Mrs. Cowden Clarke, timidly, and 
 all one big blush, presented a play-bill, with some 
 Hesperian fruit (of her own gathering). Shake- 
 speare knew the lady at once ; and taking her 
 two hands, and looking a Shakespearian look into 
 her now pale face, said in tones of unimaginable 
 depth and sweetness, ' But where is your book, 
 Mistress Mary Clarke ? Where is your Concord- 
 ance ?' And, again pressing her hands, with a 
 smile of sun-lighted Apollo, he said, ' I pray you let
 
 SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER CAME. 257 
 
 Leigh Hunt liked to sum up in his 
 mind the famous authors who, with 
 hand clasped in hand, completed the 
 chain of genius for generations. It 
 was a subject which charmed him as 
 if he had been a witness to the pass- 
 ing of the mantle of Elijah on to the 
 shoulders of Elisha, or heard the 
 dread secrets which, of old, Archdruid 
 after Archdruid whispered to his 
 chosen successor. 
 
 " It is a curious and pleasant 
 thing," says Hunt, "to consider that 
 a link of personal acquaintance can 
 be traced from the authors of our 
 own times to those of Shakespeare, 
 and to Shakespeare himself. Ovid, 
 
 me take it home with me.' And Mrs. Clarke, 
 having no words, dropped the profoundest 'Yes,' 
 with knocking knees. ' A very fair and cordial 
 gentlewoman, Anne,' said Shakespeare, aside to 
 his wife ; but Anne merely observed that ' It was 
 just like him ; he was always seeing something 
 fair where nobody else saw anything. The woman 
 odds her life ! was well enough.' And Shake- 
 speare smiled again." 
 
 17
 
 258 SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER CAME. 
 
 in recording his intimacy with Pro- 
 pertius and Horace, regrets that he 
 had only seen Virgil (First, Lib. iv., 
 v. 51). But still he thinks the sight 
 of him worth remembering. And 
 Pope, when a child, prevailed on 
 some friends to take him to a coffee- 
 house which Dryden frequented, 
 merely to look at him, which he did 
 with great satisfaction. Now, such 
 of us as have shaken hands with a 
 living poet might be able to reckon 
 up a series of connecting shakes, to 
 the very hand that wrote of Hamlet, 
 and of Falstaff, and of Desdemona. 
 
 " With some living poets, it is 
 certain. There is Thomas Moore, 
 for instance, who knew Sheridan. 
 Sheridan knew Johnson, who was 
 the friend of Savage, who knew 
 Steele, who knew Pope. Pope was 
 intimate with Congreve, and Con- 
 greve with Dryden. Dryden is said 
 to have visited Milton. Milton is
 
 SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER CAME. 259 
 
 said to have known Davenant, and 
 to have been saved by him from the 
 revenge of the restored court, in re- 
 tarn for having saved Davenant from 
 the revenge of the Commonwealth. 
 But if the link between Dryden and 
 Milton, and Milton and Davenant, is 
 somewhat apocryphal, or rather de- 
 pendent on tradition (for Richardson 
 the painter tells us the story from 
 Pope, who had it from Betterton the 
 actor, one of Davenant's company), 
 it may be carried at once from 
 Dryden to Davenant, with whom he 
 was unquestionably intimate. Dave- 
 nant then knew Hobbes, who knew 
 Bacon, who knew Ben Jonson, who 
 was intimate with Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, Chapman, Donne, Drayton, 
 Camden, Seldon, Clarendon, Sidney, 
 Raleigh, and perhaps all the great 
 men of Elizabeth's and James's time, 
 the greatest of them all undoubtedly. 
 Thus have we a link of 'beamy 
 
 172
 
 260 SUNSHINE WHICH NEVER CAME. 
 
 'mnds ' from our own times up to 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 " In this friendly genealogy we 
 have omitted the numerous side- 
 branches or common friendships. It 
 may be mentioned, however, in order 
 not to omit Spenser, that Davenant 
 resided some time in the family of 
 Lord Brooke, the friend of Sir Phillip 
 Sidney. Spenser's intimacy with 
 Sidney is mentioned by himself in 
 a letter, still extant, to Gabriel 
 Harvey."
 
 XIV. 
 BY THE RIVER-SIDE. 
 
 " // is nothing strange that men who throw their 
 flies for trout should dream of it." W. C. PRIMK. 
 
 WHO would not have gone a-fishing 
 with dear old Izaak Walton and his 
 friends, and been one in the quaint 
 and pleasing conversations which 
 took place between them ! But as 
 that has been denied us, we can still 
 be with them in spirit as they whip 
 the streams and talk. 
 
 " VENATOR. On my word, master, 
 this is a gallant trout. What shall we 
 do with him ? 
 
 " PISCATOR. Marry, e'en eat him 
 to supper. We'll go to my hostess,
 
 262 BY THE RIVER-SIDE. 
 
 from whence we came. She told me 
 as I was going out of door that my 
 brother Peter, a good angler and a 
 cheerful companion, had sent word 
 he would lodge there to-night, and 
 bring a friend with him. My hostess 
 has two beds, and I know you and I 
 may have the best. We'll rejoice 
 with my brother Peter and his friend, 
 tell tales, or sing ballads, or make a 
 catch, or find some harmless sport to 
 content us, and pass away a little 
 time without offence to either God 
 or man. 
 
 " VENATOR. A match, good master. 
 Let's go to that house, for the linen 
 looks white, and smells of lavender, 
 and I long to lie in a pair of sheets 
 that smell so. Let's be going, good 
 master, for I am hungry again with 
 fishing." 
 
 Before they return, however, Pis- 
 cator catches another logger-headed 
 chub, which he hangs on a willow
 
 BY THE RIVER-SIDE. 263 
 
 twig, and then indulges in the follow- 
 ing observations, which are remark- 
 able for their charming simplicity, 
 and (to use Sir Walter Scott's ex- 
 pression) for their "Arcadian lan- 
 guage " : " Let's be going. But turn 
 out of the way a little, good scholar, 
 towards yonder high hedge. We'll 
 sit whilst this shower falls so gently 
 upon the teeming earth, and gives a 
 sweeter smell to the lovely flowers 
 that adorn the verdant meadows. 
 Look ! under that broad beech-tree, 
 I sat down when I was last this way 
 a-fishing, and the birds in the adjoin- 
 ing grove seemed to have a friendly 
 contention with an echo, whose dead 
 voice seemed to live in a hollow cave 
 near to the brow of that primrose- 
 hill : there I sat viewing the silver 
 streams glide silently towards their 
 centre, the tempestuous sea; yet 
 sometimes opposed by rugged roots, 
 and pebble-stones, which broke their
 
 264 BY THE RIVER-SIDE. 
 
 waves, and turned them into foam ; 
 and sometimes viewing the harmless 
 lambs, some leaping securely in the 
 cool shade, whilst others sported 
 themselves in the cheerful sun ; and 
 others were craving comfort from 
 the swollen udders of their bleating 
 dams. As I thus sat, these and other 
 sights had so fully possessed my soul 
 that I thought, as the poet has 
 happily expressed it, 
 
 " ' I was for that time lifted above earth ; 
 
 And possest joys not promis'd in my birth.' 
 
 "As I left this place and entered 
 into the next field, a second pleasure 
 entertained me. 'Twas a handsome 
 milkmaid, that had cast away all 
 care, and sung like a nightingale. 
 Her voice was good, and the ditty 
 fitted for it. 'Twas that smooth song 
 that was made by Kit Marlowe, now 
 at least fifty years ago, and the milk- 
 maid's mother sung an answer to it, 
 which was made by SirWalter Raleigh
 
 BY THE RIVER-SIDE. 265 
 
 in his younger days. They were old- 
 fashioned poetry, but choicely good. 
 I think much better than that now 
 in fashion in this critical age. Look 
 yonder, on my word, yonder they be 
 a-milking again. I will give her the 
 chub, and persuade them to sing 
 those two songs for us." 
 
 This dialogue then takes place 
 between Piscator and the milk- 
 woman : 
 
 " PISCATOR. God speed, good 
 woman ! I have been a-fishing, and 
 am going to Bleak Hall to my bed ; 
 and having caught more fish than 
 will sup myself and friend, will bestow 
 this upon you and your daughter, for 
 I use to sell none. 
 
 " MILKWOMAN. Marry, God requite 
 you, sir ! and we'll eat it cheerfully ; 
 and if you come this way a-fishing 
 two months hence, a grace of God 
 I'll give you a sillabub of new verjuice 
 in a new-made haycock, and my
 
 266 BY THE RIVER-SIDE. 
 
 Maudlin shall sing you one of her 
 best ballads, for she and I both love 
 all anglers, they be such honest, civil, 
 quiet men. In the meantime, will 
 you drink a draught of red cow's 
 milk. You shall have it freely ? 
 
 " PISCATOR. No, I thank you ; but 
 I pray do us a courtesy that shall 
 stand you and your daughter in 
 nothing, and we will think ourselves 
 still something in your debt ; it is 
 but to sing us a song, that was sung 
 by you and your daughter when I 
 last passed over this meadow, about 
 eight or nine days since. 
 
 " MILKWOMAN. What song was it, 
 I pray ? Was it ' Come, shepherds, 
 deck your heads,' or ' As at noon 
 Dulcina rested,' or ' Philida flouts 
 me '? 
 
 " PISCATOR. No, it is none of 
 these; it is a song that your daughter 
 sung the first part, and you sung the 
 answer to it.
 
 BY THE RIVER-SIDE. 267 
 
 " MILKWOMAN. Oh, I know it 
 now ! I learned the first part in 
 my golden age, when I was about 
 the age of my daughter ; and the 
 latter part, which indeed fits me 
 best, but two or three years ago, 
 when the cares of the world began 
 to take hold of me ; but you shall, 
 God willing, hear them both. Come, 
 Maudlin, sing the first part to the 
 gentlemen with a merry heart, and I'll 
 sing the second when you have done." 
 
 And so the milkmaid sings, and is 
 answered by a song from her mother. 
 Piscator thanks them, but Venator 
 appears to have expressed his grati- 
 tude in a more affectionate manner 
 than his sedate companion approved 
 of, for his master observes: "Scholar, 
 let Maudlin alone ; do not offer to 
 spoil her voice. Look, yonder comes 
 my hostess to call us to supper. 
 How, now ? Is my brother Peter 
 come ?"
 
 268 BY THE RIVER-SIDE. 
 
 " HOSTESS. Yes; and a friend with 
 him. They are both glad to hear 
 you are in these parts, and long to 
 see you ; and are hungry, and long 
 to be at supper." 
 
 Piscator and Venator then meet 
 " brother Peter," who introduces 
 them to Coridon, " an honest coun- 
 tryman, a most downright, witty, 
 merry companion, that met me here 
 purposely to eat a trout, and to be 
 pleasant." 
 
 They sup of the trout which 
 Piscator had caught, with such other 
 meat as the house afforded, moist- 
 ening their cheer with " some of the 
 best barley wine, the good liquor that 
 our good, honest forefathers did use 
 to drink of, which preserved their 
 health, and made them live so long, 
 and to do so many good deeds." 
 
 They then agree to sing several 
 songs and catches, which Venator 
 says " shall give some addition of
 
 BY THE RIVER -SIDE. 269 
 
 mirth to the company, for we will be 
 merry;" upon which Piscator ob- 
 serves, " 'Tis a match, my masters ; 
 let's even say grace, and turn to the 
 fire, drink the other cup to wet our 
 whistles, and so sing away all sad 
 thoughts. Come on, my masters ; 
 \vho begins ? I think it's best to 
 draw cuts, and avoid contention." 
 The lot accordingly falls to Coridon, 
 who begins, for " he hates conten- 
 tion." The song is much admired by 
 Piscator, who exclaims, " Well sung, 
 Coridon ; this song was sung with 
 mettle, and was choicely fitted to 
 the occasion ; I shall love you for it 
 as long as I know you. I would you 
 were a brother of the angle; for a 
 companion that is cheerful, and free 
 from swearing and scurrilous dis- 
 course, is worth gold. I love such 
 mirth as does not make friends 
 ashamed to look upon one another 
 next morning ; nor men (that cannot
 
 270 BY THE RIVER-SIDE. 
 
 well bear it) to repent the money 
 they spend when they be warmed 
 with drink. And take this for a rule, 
 you may pick out such times and 
 such companies that you may make 
 yourselves merrier for a little than 
 a great deal of money ; for 'tis the 
 company and not the charge makes 
 the feast. And such a companion 
 you prove ; I thank you for it. But 
 I will not compliment you out of the 
 debt that I owe you, and, therefore, 
 I will begin my song, and wish it 
 may be as well liked." 
 
 Piscator is also rewarded for his 
 song by the applause of his com- 
 panions : and, after the following 
 dialogue, they separate for the night : 
 
 " CORIDON. Well sung, brother ! 
 you have paid your debt in good 
 coin. We anglers are all beholden 
 to the good man that made this song. 
 Come, hostess, give us more ale, and 
 let's drink to him. And now let's
 
 BY THE RIVER-SIDE. 271 
 
 everyone go to bed, that we may 
 rise early ; but first let's pay our 
 reckoning, for I will have nothing 
 to hinder me in the morning, for my 
 purpose is to prevent the sun-rising. 
 
 " PETER. A match ! I know, 
 brother, you and your scholar will 
 lie together; but where shall we 
 meet to-morrow night ? for my 
 friend Coridon and I will go up 
 the water towards Ware. 
 
 " PISCATOR. And my scholar and 
 I will go down towards Waltham. 
 
 " CORIDON. Then let's meet here, 
 for here are fresh sheets that smell 
 of lavender ; and I am sure that we 
 cannot expect better meat, or better 
 usage, in any place. 
 
 " PETER. Tis a match. Good- 
 night to everybody !"
 
 Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, London.

 
 A 001 124 291 7 
 
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