it and drollery of the man. Go where
you would, his literary relics were pointed out to you. One family
possessed pens; and oh! Mr. Bramah! such pens! they would have borne a
comparison with Miss Mitford's; and those who are acquainted with that
lady's literary implements and accessaries will admit this is no
common-place praise--pens that wrote "Paradise and the Peri" in _Lalia
Rookh_! Another showed you a glove torn up into thin shreds in the
most even and regular manner possible; each shred being in breadth
about the eighth of an inch, and the work of the _teeth_! Pairs
were demolished in this way during the progress of the _Life of
Sheridan_. A third called your attention to a note written in a
strain of the most playful banter, and announcing the next "tragi-comedy
meeting." A fourth repeated a merry impromptu; and a fifth played a very
pathetic air, composed and adapted for some beautiful lines of Mrs.
Opie's. But to return to Mayfield. Our desire to go over the cottage
which he had inhabited was irresistible. It is neat, but very small, and
remarkable for nothing except combining a most sheltered situation with
the most extensive prospect. Still one had pleasure in going over it,
and peeping into the little book-room, ycleped the "Poet's Den," from
which so much true poetry had issued to delight and amuse mankind. But
our satisfaction was not without its portion of alloy. As we approached
the cottage, a figure scarcely human appeared at one of the windows.
Unaware that it was again inhabited, we hesitated about entering; when a
livid, half-starved visage presented itself through the lattice, and a
thin, shrill voice discordantly ejaculated,--"Come in, gentlemen, come
in. _Don't be afeard!_ I'm only a tailor at work on the premises."
This villanous salutation damped sadly the illusion of the scene;
and it was some time before we rallied sufficiently from this horrible
desecration to descend to the poet's walk in the shrubbery, where,
pacing up and down the live-long morning, he composed his _Lalla
Rookh_. It is a little confined gravel-walk, in length about twenty
paces; so narrow, that there is barely room on it for two persons to
walk abreast: bounded on one side by a straggling row of stinted
laurels, on the other by some old decayed wooden paling; at the end of
it was a huge haystack. Here, without prospect, space, fields, flowers,
or natural beauties of any description, was that most imaginative poem
conceived