Dignified neighbor and landlord.-Visits from Lord Byron and Mr. Wordsworth.-Infernal conduct of the angels in Paradise Lost.Return of hypochondria.-Descent of Liberty.-Story of Rimini. United States.-Visits to Lord Byron.-History of Shelley while in England. ON leaving prison, I went to live in the Edgware-road, because my brother's house was in the neighborhood. When we met, we rushed into each other's arms, and tears of manhood bedewed our cheeks. Not that the idea of the Prince Regent had any thing to do with such grave emotions. His Royal Highness continued to affect us with any thing but solemnity, as we took care to make manifest in the Examiner. We had a hopeful and respectful word for every reigning prince, but himself; and I must say, that with the exception of the Emperor Alexander, not one of them deserved it. The lodging which my family occupied (for the fine, and the state of my health, delayed our resumption of a house) was next door to a wealthy old gentleman, who kept a handsome carriage, and spoke very bad grammar. My landlord, who was also a dignified personage after his fashion, pointed him out to me one day, as he was getting into this carriage; adding, in a tone amounting to the awful," He is the greatest plumber in London." The same landlord, who had a 66 splendid turn for anti-climax, and who had gifted his children. with names proportionate to his paternal sense of what became him, called out to one of them from his parlor window, You, sir, there-Maximilian-come out of the gutter." He was a good-natured sort of domineering individual; and would say to his wife, when he went out, "Damn it, my love, I insist on having the pudding.” In this house, Lord Byron continued the visits which he made me in prison. Unfortunately, I was too ill to return them. He pressed me very much to go to the theatre with him; but illness, and the dread of committing my critical independence, alike prevented me. His lordship was one of a management that governed Drury-lane Theatre at that time, and that were not successful. He got nothing by it, but petty vexations and a good deal of scandal. Lord Byron's appearance at that time was the finest I ever saw it. He was fatter than before his marriage, but only just enough so to complete the elegance of his person; and the turn of his head and countenance had a spirit and elevation in it, which, though not unmixed with disquiet, gave him altogether a very noble look. His dress, which was black, with white trowsers, and which he wore buttoned close over the body, completed the succinctness and gentlemanliness of his appearance. I remember one day, as he stood looking out of the window, he resembled in a lively manner the portrait of him by Phillips, by far the best that has appeared; I mean the best of him at his best time of life, and the most like him in features as well as expression. He sat one morning so long, that Lady Byron sent up twice to let him know she was waiting. Her ladyship used to go on in the carriage to Henderson's nursery-ground, to get flowers. I had not the honor of knowing her, nor ever saw her but once, when I caught a glimpse of her at the door. I thought she had a pretty, earnest look, with her “ pippin" face; an epithet by which she playfully designated herself. I had a little study overlooking the fields to Westbourne -a sequestered spot at that time embowered in trees. The study was draperied with white and green, having furniture to match; and as the noble poet had seen me during my imprisonment in a bower of roses, he might here be said, with no great stretch of imagination, to have found me in a box of lilies. I mention this, because he took pleasure in the look of the little apartment. Also, because my wife's fair cousin, V. K. now, alas! no more, who was as good as she was intelligent, and as resolute as gentle, extinguished me there one morning when my dressing-gown had caught fire. She was all her life, indeed, taking painful tasks upon herself, to save trouble to others. In a room at the end of the garden to this house was a magnificent rocking-horse, which a friend had given my little boy; and Lord Byron, with a childish glee becoming a poet, it. Ah! why did he ever ride his Pegasus, would ride upon Poets should never give up their privito less advantage? lege of surmounting sorrow with joy. It was here also I had the honor of a visit from Mr. Wordsworth. He came to thank me for the zeal I had shown in advocating the cause of his genius. I had the pleasure of showing him his book on my shelves by the side of Milton; a sight which must have been the more agreeable, inasmuch as the visit was unexpected. He favored me, in return, with giving his opinion of some of the poets, his contemporaries, who would assuredly not have paid him. a visit on the same grounds on which he was pleased to honor myself. Nor do I believe, that from that day to this, he thought it becoming in him to reciprocate the least part of any benefit which a word in good season may have done for him. Lord Byron, in resentment for my having called He him the "prince of the bards of his time," would not allow him to be even the "one-eyed monarch of the blind." said he was the "blind monarch of the one-eyed." I must still differ with his lordship on that point; but I must own, that, after all which I have seen and read, posterity, in my opinion, will differ not a little with one person respecting the amount of merit to be ascribed to Mr. Wordsworth; though who that one person is, I shall leave the reader to discover. Mr. Wordsworth, whom Mr. Hazlitt designated as one that would have had the wide circle of his humanities made still wider, and a good deal more pleasant, by dividing a little more of his time between his lakes in Westmoreland and the hotels of the metropolis, had a dignified manner, with a deep and roughish but not unpleasing voice, and an exalted mode of speaking. He had a habit of keeping his left hand in the bosom of his waistcoat; and in this attitude, except when he turned round to take one of the subjects of his criticism from the shelves (for his contemporaries were there also), he sat dealing forth his eloquent but hardly catholic judgments. In his father's house," there were not "many mansions." He was as skeptical on the merits of all kinds of poetry but one, as Richardson was on those of the novels of Fielding. Under the study in which my visitor and I were sitting was an archway, leading to a nursery-ground; a cart happened to go through it while I was inquiring whether he would take any refreshment; and he uttered, in so lofty a voice, the words, "Any thing which is going forward," that I felt inclined to ask him whether he would take a piece of the cart. Lamb would certainly have done it. But this was a levity which would neither have been so proper on my part, after so short an acquaintance, nor very intelligible perhaps, in any sense of the word, to the serious poet. There are good-humored warrants for smiling, which lie deeper even than Mr. Wordsworth's thoughts for tears. I did not see this distinguished person again till thirty years afterward; when, I should venture to say, his manner was greatly superior to what it was in the former instance; indeed, quite natural and noble, with a cheerful air of animal as well as spiritual confidence; a gallant bearing, curiously reminding one of a certain illustrious duke, as I have seen him walking some dozen years ago by a lady's side, with no unbecoming oblivion of his time of life. I observed, also, that he no longer committed himself in scornful criticisms, or, indeed, in any criticisms whatever, at least as far as I knew. He had found out that he could, at least, afford to be silent. Indeed, he spoke very little of any thing. The conversation turned upon Milton, and I fancied I had opened a subject that would have "brought him out," by remarking, that the most diabolical thing in all Paradise Lost was a WORDSWORTH. feeling attributed to the angels. 13 Ay!" said Mr. WordsI said it was the passage worth, and inquired what it was. Each stair was meant mysteriously, nor stood His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss." The Mr. Wordsworth pondered, and said nothing. I thought to myself, what pity for the poor devil would not good uncle Toby have expressed! Into what indignation would not Burns have exploded! What knowledge of themselves would not have been forced upon those same coxcombical and malignant angels by Fielding or Shakspeare! Walter Scott said, that the eyes of Burns were the finest he ever saw. I can not say the same of Mr. Wordsworth; that is, not in the sense of the beautiful, or even of the profound. But certainly I never beheld eyes that looked so inspired or supernatural. They were like fires half burning, half smouldering, with a sort of acrid fixture of regard, and seated at the further end of two caverns. One might imagine Ezekiel or Isaiah to have had such eyes. It was for a good while after leaving prison that I was unable to return the visits of the friends who saw me there. Two years' confinement, and illness in combination, had acted so injuriously upon a sensitive temperament, that for many months I could not leave home without a morbid wish to return, and a fear of being seized with some fit or other in the streets, perhaps with sudden death; and this was one |