of them were excited by some positive natural scene where they had actually died, written, or fought. All his poetry was the result of a deep feeling roused by what passed before his eyes. Keats was a stretch beyond this. Byron could not enter into it any more than he could Shakespeare. He was too frank to conceal his thoughts. If he really admired Keats he would have said so (I am afraid I am as obscure here as Wordsworth). So, in his controversy with Bowles, Byron really thought Pope the greater poet. He pretended that a man who versified the actual vices or follies was a greater, and more moral poet than he who invented a plot, invented characters which by their action on each other produced a catastrophe from which a moral was inferred. This at once showed the reach of his genius.

CCXCI.

This entertaining narrative is inserted for the especial consideration and guidance of dramatic critics.

Benjamin Robert Haydon to Miss Mitford.

August 18, 1826.

were poorly. What -'s safe arrival again,

How do you find yourself? I heard you are you about? I was happy to hear of and I shall be most happy to see him, though tell him he will find no more Solomons' towering up as a background to our conversations. Nothing but genteel-sized drawing-room pocket-historyAlexander in a nutshell; Bucephalus no bigger than a Shetland pony, and my little girl's doll a giantess to my Olympias. The other night I paid my butcher; one of the miracles of these times, you will say. Let me tell you I have all my life been seeking for a butcher whose respect for genius predominated over his love of gain. I could not make out, before I dealt with this man, his excessive desire that I should be his customer; his sly hints as I passed his shop that he had a bit of South Down, very fine; a sweetbread, perfection; and a calf's foot that was all jelly without bone!' The other day he called, and I had him sent up into the painting-room. I found him in great admiration of 'Alexander.' 'Quite alive, Sir!' 'I am glad you think so,' said I. Yes, Sir, but, as I have said often to my sister, you could not have painted that picture, Sir, if you had not eat my meat, Sir!'

'Very true,' Mr. Sowerby. Ah! Sir, I have a fancy for genus, Sir!' 'Have you, Mr. Sowerby?' 'Yes, Sir; Mrs. Siddons, Sir, has eat my meat, Sir; never was such a woman for chops, Sir !'and he drew up his beefy, shiny face, clean shaved, with a clean blue cravat under his chin, a clean jacket, a clean apron, and a pair of hands that would pin an ox to the earth if he was obstreperous- Ah! Sir, she was a wonderful crayture!' 'She was, Mr. Sowerby.' 'Ah, Sir, when she used to act that there character, you see (but Lord, such a head! as I say to my sister)--that there woman, Sir, that murders a king between 'em!' 'Oh! Lady Macbeth.' 'Ah, Sir, that's it-Lady Macbeth-I used to get up with the butler behind her carriage when she acted, and, as I used to see her looking quite wild, and all the people quite frightened, Ah, ha! my lady, says I, if it wasn't for my meat, though, you wouldn't be able to do that!' 'Mr. Sowerby, you seem to be a man of feeling. Will you take a glass of wine?' After a bow or two, down he sat, and by degrees his heart opened. 'You see, Sir, I have fed Mrs. Siddons, Sir; John Kemble, Sir; Charles Kemble, Sir; Stephen Kemble, Sir; and Madame Catalani, Sir; Morland the painter, and, I beg your pardon, Sir, and you, Sir.' 'Mr. Sowerby, you do me honour.' 'Madame Catalani, Sir, was

a wonderful woman for sweetbreads; but the Kemble family, Sir, the gentlemen, Sir, rump-steaks and kidneys in general was their taste; but Mrs. Siddons, Sir, she liked chops, Sir, as much as you do, Sir,' &c. &c. I soon perceived that the man's ambition was to feed genius. I shall recommend you to him; but is he not a capital fellow? But a little acting with his remarks would make you roar with laughter. Think of Lady Macbeth eating chops! Is this not a peep behind the curtain? I remember Wilkie saying that at a public dinner he was looking out for some celebrated man, when at last he caught a glimpse for the first time of a man whose books he had read with care for years, picking the leg of a roast goose, perfectly abstracted! Never will I bring up my boys to any profession that is not a matter of necessary want to the world. Painting, unless considered as it ought to be, is a mere matter of ornament and luxury. It is not yet taken up as it should be in a wealthy country like England, and all those who devote themselves to the higher branches of Art must suffer the penalty, as I have done, and am doing. So I was told, and to no purpose. I opposed

my father, my mother, and my friends, though I am duly gratified by my fame in the obscurest corners. Last week a book-stall keeper showed me one of my own books at his stall, and, by way of recommending it, pointed out a sketch of my own on the flyleaf, 'Which,' said he, 'I suppose is by Haydon himself. Ah! Sir, he was badly used—a disgrace to our great men.' 'But he was imprudent,' said I. Imprudent!' said he. Yes, of course; he depended on their taste and generosity too much.' 'Have you any more of his books?' said I. 'Oh! I had a great many; but I have sold them all, Sir, but this, and another that I will never part with.'

CCXCII.

Benjamin Robert Haydon to William Wordsworth.

London: October 16, 1842.

In the words of our dear departed friend, Charles Lamb, 'You good-for-nothing old Lake-poet,' what has become of you? Do you remember his saying that at my table in 1819, with 'Jerusalem' towering behind us in the painting-room, and Keats and your friend Monkhouse of the party? Do you remember Lamb voting me absent, and then making a speech descanting on my excellent port, and proposing a vote of thanks? Do you remember his then voting me present?—I had never left my chair-and informing me of what had been done during my retirement, and hoping I was duly sensible of the honour? Do you remember the Commissioner (of Stamps and Taxes) who asked you if you did not think Milton a great genius, and Lamb getting up and asking leave with a candle to examine his phrenological development? Do you remember poor dear Lamb, whenever the Commissioner was equally profound, saying: 'My son John went to bed with his breeches on,' to the dismay of the learned man? Do you remember you and I and Monkhouse getting Lamb out of the room by force, and putting on his great coat, he reiterating his earnest desire to examine the Commissioner's skull? And don't you remember Keats proposing 'Confusion to the memory of Newton,' and upon your insisting upon an explanation before you drank it, his saying: Because he destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing

it to a prism.' Ah! my dear old friend, you and I shall never see such days again! The peaches are not so big now as they were in our days. Many were the immortal dinners which took place in that painting-room, where the food was simple, the wine good, and the poetry 'first rate.' Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, David Wilkie, Leigh Hunt, Talfourd, Keats, &c., &c., attended my summons, and honoured my table.

My best regards to Mrs. and Miss Wordsworth, in which my wife and daughter join.

Ever yours,

B. R. HAYDON.

CCXCIII.

The letters of De Quincey display his marvellous style in its most characteristic moods. He doffed his singing robes in addressing those dear to him, and aimed rather at securing sympathy than admiration. For sympathy, indeed, his tortured spirit is seen visibly pining through all the seventy-five years of his suffering existence, and to this is due, no doubt, that occasional excess of emphasis which has brought on his writing the charge of insincerity.

Thomas De Quincey to Jessie Miller.

Saturday morning: May 26, 1837. My dear Miss Jessie,-In some beautiful verses where the writer has occasion to speak of festivals, household or national, that revolve annually, I recollect at this moment from his descrip tion one line to this effect

Remembered half the year and hoped the rest.

Thus Christmas, I suppose, is a subject for memory until Midsummer, after which it becomes a subject for hope, because the mind ceases to haunt the image of the past festival in a dawning anticipation of another that is daily drawing nearer. 'Well,' I hear you say, a very pretty sentimental opening for a note addressed to a lady; but what is the moral of it?'

The moral, my dear Miss Jessie, is this-that I, soul-sick of endless writing, look back continually with sorrowful remembrances to the happy interval which I spent under your roof; and next after that, I regret those insulated evenings (scattered here and there) which, with a troubled pleasure-pleasure anxious and

boding-I have passed beneath the soft splendours of your lamps since I was obliged to quit the quiet haven of your house. Sorrowful, I say, these remembrances are, and must be by contrast with my present gloomy solitude; and if they ever cease to be sorrowful, it is when some new evening to be spent underneath the same lamps comes within view. That which is remembered only suddenly puts on the blossoming of hope, and wears the vernal dress of a happiness to come instead of the sad autumnal dress of happiness that has vanished.

Is this sentimental? Be it so; but then also it is intensely true; and sentimentality cannot avail to vitiate truth; on the contrary, truth avails to dignify and exalt the sentimental. But why breathe forth these feelings, sentimental or not, precisely on this vulgar Saturday? (for Saturday is a day radically vulgar to my mind, incurably sacred to the genius of marketing, and hostile to the sentimental in any shape). 'Why?' you persist in asking. Simply because, if this is Saturday, it happens that to-morrow is Sunday; and on a Sunday night only, if even then, I can now approach you without danger. And what I fear is-that you, so strict in your religious observances, will be dedicating to some evening lecture, or charity sermon, or missionary meeting, that time which might be spent in Duncan Street, and perhaps―pardon me for saying so-more profitably. How so?' Why because, by attending the missionary meeting, for example, you will, after all, scarcely contribute the 7th, or even the 70th, share to the conversion of some New Zealander or feather-cinctured prince of Owhyee. Whereas now, on the other hand, by vouchsafing your presence to Duncan Street, you will give-and not to an unbaptised infidel, who can never thank you, but to a son of the Cross, who will thank you from the very centre of his heart-a happiness like that I spoke of as belonging to recurring festivals, furnishing a subject for memory through one half of the succeeding interval, and for hope through the other.

Florence was with me yesterday morning, and again throughout the evening; and, by the way, dressed in your present. Perhaps she may see you before I do, and may tell you that I have been for some time occupied at intervals in writing some memorial Lines for a Cenotaph to Major Miller of the Horse Guards Blue,' and towards which I want some information from