her hand, the
Poet had written a tragedy on the subject, and was, therefore, capable
of dealing with it. Letters of vindication were sent to the papers,
but no one was much interested in the point one way or the other;
save, of course, the good Mrs. Forster, to whom it was vital. I am
afraid, however, there was truth in the statement; for it is
completely supported by a stray passage in one of the Poet's letters
to his future wife, recently published.

Forster, I fancy, must have often looked wistfully back to the old
Lincoln's Inn days, when he sat in his large Tulkinghorn room, with the
Roman's finger pointing down to his head. I often grieve that I did not
see this Roman, as I might have done, before he was erased; for Forster
was living there when I first knew him. On his marriage he moved to that
snug house in Montague Square, where we had often cosy dinners. He was
driven from it, he used to say, by the piano-practising on each side of
him, which became "in-_tol_-erable"; but I fancy the modest house was
scarcely commensurate with his ambitions. It was somewhat old-fashioned
too. And yet in his grand palatial mansion at Kensington I doubt if he
was as jocund or as irrepressible as then. I am certain the burden of an
ambitious life told upon his health and spirits.

I often turn back to the day when I first called on him, at the now
destroyed offices at Whitehall, when he emerged from an inner room in
a press of business. I see him now, a truly brisk man, full of life
and energy, and using even then his old favourite hospitable formula,
"My dear sir, I am _very_ busy--very busy; I have just escaped from
the commissioners. But you must dine with me to-morrow and we will
talk of these things." Thus he did not ask you, but he "commanded
you," even as a king would.

One of the most interesting things about Forster was his
"receptivity." Stern and inflexible as he was in the case of old
canons, he was always ready to welcome anything new or striking,
provided it had merit and was not some imposture. I never met a better
appreciator of genuine humour. He had been trained, or had trained
himself; whatever shape it had, only let it have _merit_. He
thoroughly _enjoyed_ a jest, and furnished his own obstreperous laugh
by way of applause. As I have said, there was something truly
_Johnsonian_ about him; everything he said or decided you knew well
was founded on a principle of some kind; he was a solid judicial man,
and e