in the opinion of that
guardian of a country inn the hour was come and gone when well-regulated
persons should betake themselves to bed. To my delight my friend
knew nearly every prominent living author, could give me personal
descriptions of them, as well as scholarly and well-digested criticisms
of their works. He was certainly no ordinary man, but who he was I have
never learned with certainty, though I cherish the agreeable impression
that I could give a shrewd guess. At one moment the talk turned on
_Festus_, and then I heard the most lucid and philosophical account of
that work I have ever listened to or read. I was told that the author
of _Festus_ had never (in all the years that had elapsed since its
publication, when he was in his earliest manhood, though now he is
grown elderly) ceased to emend it, notwithstanding the protestations
of critics; and that an improved and enlarged edition of the poem might
probably appear after his death. Struck with the especial knowledge
displayed of the author in question, I asked if he happened to be
a friend. Then, with a scarcely perceptible smile playing about the
corners of the mouth (a circumstance without significance for me at the
time and only remembered afterwards), my new acquaintance answered:
"He is my oldest and dearest friend." Next morning I saw my night-long
conversationalist in company with a clergyman get on to the Buttermere
coach and wave his hand to me as they vanished under the trees that
overhung the Buttermere road, but in answer to many inquiries the utmost
I could learn of my interesting acquaintance was that he was somehow
understood to be a great author, and a friend of Charles Kingsley, who,
I think they said, was or had been with him there or elsewhere that
year. Whether besides being the "oldest and dearest friend" of the
author of _Festus_, my delightful companion was Philip James Bailey
himself I have never learned to this day, and can only cherish a
pleasant trust; but what remains as really important in this connexion
is that whosoever he was he originated my first real love of Rossetti's
poetry, and gave me my first realisable idea of the man. Taking up from
the table some popular _Garland, Casket, Treasury_, or other anthology
of English poetry, he pointed out a sonnet entitled _Lost Days_ (to
which, indeed, a friend at home had directed my attention), and dwelt
upon its marvellous strength of spiritual insight, and power of symbolic
phrase