o token of its approach--_him_
they must attend as satellites the sun, as courtiers their king. Then
there are the Lakers,--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, De Quincey
burdened with his tremendous dream, Wilson in his splendid youth. What
talk, what argument, what readings of lyrical and other ballads, what
contempt of critics, what a hail of fine things! Then there is Charles
Lamb's room in Inner Temple Lane, the hush of a whist table in one
corner, the host stuttering puns as he deals the cards; and sitting round
about. Hunt, whose every sentence is flavoured with the hawthorn and the
primrose, and Hazlitt maddened by Waterloo and St. Helena, and Godwin
with his wild theories, and Kemble with his Roman look. And before the
morning comes, and Lamb stutters yet more thickly--for there is a slight
flavour of punch in the apartment--what talk there has been of Hogarth's
prints, of Izaak Walton, of the old dramatists, of Sir Thomas Browne's
"Urn Burial," with Elia's quaint humour breaking through every
interstice, and flowering in every fissure and cranny of the
conversation! One likes to think of these social gatherings of wit and
geniuses; they are more interesting than conclaves of kings or
convocations of bishops. One would like to have been the waiter at the
"Mermaid," and to have stood behind Shakspeare's chair. What was that
functionary's opinion of his guests? Did he listen and become witty by
infection? or did he, when his task was over, retire unconcernedly to
chalk up the tavern score? One envies somewhat the damsel who brought
Lamb the spirit-case and the hot water. I think of these meetings, and,
in lack of companionship, frame for myself imaginary conversations--not
so brilliant, of course, as Mr. Landor's, but yet sufficient to make
pleasant for me the twilight hour while the lamp is yet unlit, and my
solitary room is filled with ruddy lights and shadows of the fire.

Of human notabilities men of letters are the most interesting, and this
arises mainly from their outspokenness as a class. The writer makes
himself known in a way that no other man makes himself known. The
distinguished engineer may be as great a man as the distinguished writer,
but as a rule we know little about him. We see him invent a locomotive,
or bridge a strait, but there our knowledge stops; we look at the engine,
we walk across the bridge, we admire the ingenuity of the one, we are
grateful for the conveniency of the other,