helas!_ uniformly for the English _alas!_ and apparently
with no consciousness of his mistake. He had also this singularity
about him--that he was everlastingly metaphysicizing against
metaphysics. To me, who was buried in metaphysical reveries from my
earliest days, this was not likely to be an attraction; any more than
the vicious structure of his diction was likely to please my
scholarlike taste. All grounds of disgust, however, gave way before my
sense of his powerful merits; and, as I have said, I sought his
acquaintance. Coming up to London from Oxford about 1807 or 1808 I
made enquiries about him; and found that he usually read the papers at
a coffee-room in Piccadilly; understanding that he was poor, it struck
me that he might not wish to receive visits at his lodgings, and
therefore I sought him at the coffee-room. Here I took the liberty of
introducing myself to him. He received me courteously, and invited me
to his rooms--which at that time were in Sherrard-street,
Golden-square--a street already memorable to me. I was much struck
with the eloquence of his conversation; and afterwards I found that
Mr. Wordsworth, himself the most eloquent of men in conversation, had
been equally struck when he had met him at Paris between the years
1790 and 1792, during the early storms of the French revolution. In
Sherrard-street I visited him repeatedly, and took notes of the
conversations I had with him on various subjects. These I must have
somewhere or other; and I wish I could introduce them here, as they
would interest the reader. Occasionally in these conversations, as in
his books, he introduced a few notices of his private history; in
particular I remember his telling me that in the East Indies he had
been a prisoner of Hyder's; that he had escaped with some difficulty;
and that, in the service of one of the native princes as secretary or
interpreter, he had accumulated a small fortune. This must have been
too small, I fear, at that time to allow him even a philosopher's
comforts; for some part of it, invested in the French funds, had been
confiscated. I was grieved to see a man of so much ability, of
gentlemanly manners, and refined habits, and with the infirmity of
deafness, suffering under such obvious privations; and I once took the
liberty, on a fit occasion presenting itself, of requesting that he
would allow me to send him some books which he had been casually
regretting that he did not possess; for I was at t