such a poet as Chaucer 500 years ago, could have burst forth into
such astonishing production of poetry as marked the first quarter of the
century, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, etc.

_J. M._--It is true that Germany has nothing, save Goethe, Schiller, Heine,
that's her whole list. But I should say a word for the poetic movement in
France: Hugo, Gautier, etc. Mr. G. evidently knew but little, or even
nothing, of modern French poetry. He spoke up for Leopardi, on whom he had
written an article first introducing him to the British public, ever so
many years ago--in the _Quarterly_.

_Mr. G._--Wordsworth used occasionally to dine with me when I lived in the
Albany. A most agreeable man. I always found him amiable, polite, and
sympathetic. Only once did he jar upon me, when he spoke slightingly of
Tennyson's first performance.

_J. M._--But he was not so wrong as he would be now. Tennyson's Juvenilia
are terribly artificial.

_Mr. G._--Yes, perhaps. Tennyson has himself withdrawn some of them. I
remember W., when he dined with me, used on leaving to change his silk
stockings in the anteroom and put on grey worsted.

_J. M._--I once said to M. Arnold that I'd rather have been Wordsworth than
anybody [not exactly a modest ambition]; and Arnold, who knew him well in
the Grasmere country, said, "Oh no, you would not; you would wish you were
dining with me at the Athenaeum. He was too much of the peasant for you."

_Mr. G._--No, I never felt that; I always thought him a polite and an
amiable man.

Mentioned Macaulay's strange judgment in a note in the _History_, that
Dryden's famous lines,

"... Fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.
To-morrow's falser than the former day;
Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage!..."

are as fine as any eight lines in Lucretius. Told him of an excellent
remark of ---- on this, that Dryden's passage wholly lacks the mystery and
great superhuman air of Lucretius. Mr. G. warmly agreed.

He regards it as a remarkable sign of the closeness of the church of
England to the roots of life and feeling in the country, that so many
clergymen should have written so much good poetry. Who, for instance? I
asked. He named Heber, Moultrie, Newman (_Dream of Gerontius_), and Faber
in at least one good poem, "The poor Labourer" (or some such title),
Charles Tenny