so simple-minded, and so modest! If I am not mistaken, Coleridge proved so impracticable a travellingcompanion, that Wordsworth and his sister were at last obliged to separate from him.* During that

tour they met with Scott, who repeated to them a portion of his then unpublished Lay; which Wordsworth, as might be expected, did not greatly admire.†

I do indeed regret that Wordsworth has printed only fragments of his sister's Journal: it is most excellent, and ought to have been published entire.

I was walking with Lord Lonsdale on the terrace at Lowther Castle, when he said, "I wish I could do

* "Coleridge," writes Wordsworth, was at that time in bad spirits, and somewhat too much in love with his own dejection; and he departed from us, as is recorded in my sister's journal, soon after we left Loch Lomond." Memoirs of Wordsworth, i. 207. This tour took place in 1803.-ED.

† In my memoranda of Wordsworth's conversation I find this: "From Sir Walter Scott's earliest poems, The Eze of St. John, &c. I did not suppose that he possessed the power which he afterwards displayed, especially in his novels. Coleridge's Christabel no doubt gave him the idea of writing long ballad-poems: Dr. Stoddart bad a very wicked memory, and repeated various passages of it (then unpublished) to Scott. Part of the Lay of the Last Minstrel was recited to me by Scott while it was yet in manuscript; and I did not expect that it would make much sensation: but I was mistaken; for it went up like a balloon."-ED.

A large portion of it has since been printed in the Memoirs of her brother.-ED.

something for poor Campbell." My rejoinder was, "I wish you would do something for poor Wordsworth, who is in such straitened circumstances, that he and his family deny themselves animal food several times a week." Lord Lonsdale was the more inclined to assist Wordsworth, because the Wordsworth family had been hardly used by the preceding Lord Lonsdale; and he eventually proved one of his kindest friends.

What a noble minded person Lord Lonsdale was ! I have received from him, in this room, hundreds of pounds for the relief of literary men.

I never attempted to write a sonnet, because I do not see why a man, if he has anything worth saying, should be tied down to fourteen lines. Wordsworth perhaps appears to most advantage in a sonnet, because its strict limits prevent him from running into that wordiness to which he is somewhat prone. Don't imagine from what I have just said, that I mean to disparage Wordsworth: he deserves all his fame.

There are passages in Wordsworth where I can trace his obligations to Usher's Clio.*

Clio, or a Discourse on Taste,-a little volume of no ordinary merit.-ED.

Hoppner was a painter of decided genius. Some of his portraits are equal to any modern portraits; and his Venus is certainly fine.

He had an awful temper,-the most spiteful person I ever knew! He and I were members of a club called the Council of Trent (so named from its consisting of thirty); and because, on one occasion, I was interesting myself about the admission of an artist whom Hoppner disliked, Hoppner wrote me a letter full of the bitterest reproach. Yet he had his good qualities. He had been a singing-boy at Windsor, and consequently was allowed "the run of the royal kitchen;" but some time after his marriage (and, it was supposed, through the ill offices of West) that favour was withdrawn; and in order to conceal the matter from his wife, who, he knew, would be greatly vexed at it, Hoppner occasionally, after secretly pocketing a roll to dine upon, would go out for the day, and on his return pretend that he had been dining at Windsor.

He and Gifford were the dearest friends in the

* In consequence of the sweetness of his voice, he was made a chorister in the Royal Chapel. His mother was one of the German attendants at the Palace. See A. Cunningham's Lives of British Painters, v. 242.-ED.

world; and yet they were continually falling out and abusing each other. One morning, Hoppner, having had some little domestic quarrel with Mrs. Hoppner, exclaimed very vehemently, "Is not a man to be pitied who has such a wife and such a friend" (meaning Gifford)?

His wife and daughter were always grumbling, because, when he was asked to the Duchess of —'s or to Lord 's, they were not invited also; and he once said to them, "I might as well attempt to take the York waggon with me as you." Indeed, society is so constituted in England, that it is useless for celebrated artists to think of bringing their families into the highest circles, where themselves are admitted only on account of their genius. Their wives and daughters must be content to remain at home.

Gifford was extremely indignant at an article on his translation of Juvenal which appeared in The Critical Review; and he put forth a very angry answer to it, a large quarto pamphlet. I lent my copy to Byron, and he never returned it. One passage in that pamphlet is curious, because it describes,

i

what Gifford was himself eventually to become,-a reviewer; who is compared to a huge toad sitting under a stone: and besides, the passage is very picturesque. ["During my apprenticeship, I enjoyed perhaps as many places as Scrub, though I suspect they were not altogether so dignified: the chief of them was that of a planter of cabbages in a bit of ground which my master held near the town. It was the decided opinion of Panurge that the life of a cabbage-planter was the safest and pleasantest in the world. I found it safe enough, I confess, but not altogether pleasant; and therefore took every opportunity of attending to what I liked better, which happened to be, watching the actions of insects and reptiles, and, among the rest, of a huge toad. I never loved toads, but I never molested them; for my mother had early bid me remember, that every living thing had the same Maker as myself; and the words always rang in my ears. This toad, then, who had taken up his residence under a hollow stone in a hedge of blind nettles, I used to watch for hours together. It was a lazy, lumpish animal, that squatted on its belly, and perked up its hideous head with two glazed eyes, precisely like a