oring of certain old favorites of mine, and the poet's
wife joined with me in deciding against the author in his proposal to
cast aside so many beautiful songs,--songs as well worth saving as any
in the volume. Procter argued that, being past seventy, he had now
reached to years of discretion, and that his judgment ought to be
followed without a murmur. I held out firm to the end of our discussion,
and we settled the matter with this compromise: he was to expunge
whatever he chose from the English edition, but I was to have my own way
with the American one. So to this day the American reprint is the only
complete collection of Barry Cornwall's earliest pieces, for I held on
to all the old lyrics, without discarding a single line.

The poet's figure was short and full, and his voice had a low, veiled
tone habitually in it, which made it sometimes difficult to hear
distinctly what he was saying. When in conversation, he liked to be very
near his listener, and thus stand, as it were, on confidential ground
with him. His turn of thought was cheerful among his friends, and he
proceeded readily into a vein of wit and nimble expression. Verbal
felicity seemed natural to him, and his epithets, evidently unprepared,
were always perfect. He disliked cant and hard ways of judging
character. He praised easily. He had no wish to stand in anybody's shoes
but his own, and he said, "There is no literary vice of a darker shade
than envy." Talleyrand's recipe for perfect happiness was the opposite
to his. He impressed every one who came near him as a born gentleman,
chivalrous and generous in a marked degree, and it was the habit of
those who knew him to have an affection for him. Altering a line of
Pope, this counsel might have been safely tendered to all the authors of
his day,--

"Disdain whatever _Procter's mind_ disdains."

End of Project Gutenberg's Yesterdays with Authors, by James T. Fields

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS ***

***** This file should be named 12632.txt or 12632.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/6/3/12632/

Produced by Keren Vergon, David Cortesi and PG Distributed Proofreaders

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these wor