f running
water--although it was the very tiniest of rillets--led us away from
philosophy, and he talked of Sir Walter Scott, characterizing him as
the greatest novelist of all time. He said, 'What a gift it was that
Scotland gave to the world in him. And your Burns! He is supreme
amongst your poets.' He praised Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, as one of
the finest of biographies; and my happening to mention an anecdote of
Scott from that book led to our spending the greater part of the rest
of our walk in the telling of stories. Tennyson was an admirable
storyteller. He asked me for some good Scotch anecdotes, and I gave
him some, but he was able to cap each of them with a better one of
his own--all of which he told with arch humor and simplicity.

"He then told some anecdotes of a visit to Scotland. After he had left
an inn in the island of Skye, the landlord was asked, 'Did he know who
had been staying in his house? It was the poet Tennyson.' He replied,
'Lor', to think o' that! and sure I thoucht he was a shentleman!' Near
Stirling the same remark was made to the keeper of the hotel where he
had stayed. 'Do you ken who you had wi' you t' other night?' 'Naa, but
he was a pleesant shentleman.' 'It was Tennyson, the poet.' 'An' what
may _he_ be?' 'Oh, he is the writer o' verses such as you see i' the
papers.' 'Noo, to think o' that, jest a pooblic writer, an' I gied him
ma best bedroom!' Of Mrs. Tennyson, however, the landlord remarked,
'Oh, but _she_ was an angel!'

"I have said that the conversational power of Tennyson struck me quite
as much as his poetry had done for forty years. To explain this I must
compare it with that of some of his contemporaries. It was not like
the meteoric flashes and fireworks of Carlyle's talk, which sometimes
dazzled as much as it instructed, and it had not that torrent-rush in
which Carlyle so often indulged. It was far more restrained. It had
neither the continuousness nor the range of Browning's many-sided
conversation, nor did it possess the charm of the ethereal
visionariness of Newman's. It lacked the fullness and consummate sweep
of Mr. Buskin's talk, and it had neither the historic range and
brilliance of Dean Stanley's, nor the fascinating subtlety--the
elevation and the depth combined--of that of the late F.D. Maurice.
_But_ it was clear as crystal, and calm as well as clear. It was terse
and exact, precise and luminous. Not a word was wasted and every
phrase was suggestive. Tenn