find how one may obtain from him concessions which lead to great inconsistencies. Though an incomparable declaimer and speech-maker, he had neither the readiness nor the acuteness required by a colloquial disputant, so that with a sense of inferiority, which makes one feel humble in his presence, I do not feel in the least afraid of him.' Robinson adds, "This I wrote when I knew little of him: I used afterwards to compare him as a disputant to a serpent, easy to kill if you assume the offensive, but if you let him attack, his bite is mortal. Some years after this, when I saw Madame de Staël in London, I asked her what she thought of him. She replied, 'He is very great in monologue, but he has no idea of dialogue.""-Diary, vol. i. pp. 313, 314.

In 1826 we find Robinson's admiration for Coleridge of the same high, but qualified, kind. Writing on June 15th, he says:

66

Coleridge, as usual, very eloquent, but, as usual, nothing remains now in my mind that I can venture to insert here. I never took a note of Coleridge's conversation which was not a caput mortuum. But still there is a spirit, and glorious spirit too, in what he says at all times." -Diary, vol. ii. p. 331.

Robinson was present at the first performance of Coleridge's tragedy Remorse. His "interest for the play was greater than in the play." In 1832 we find Robinson and Landor talking together to Coleridge at the Gilmans'. They found the old man eloquent, "horribly bent," and a great part of his conversation was abuse of the Ministry for taking away his pension, a piece of meanness on the part of Earl Grey which Landor denounced with his usual stormy vehemence. It was on July 25th, 1884, that Robinson heard of Coleridge's death, and mourned the loss which English literature had sustained.

With Southey, Robinson's acquaintance was less intimate than with Southey's fellow-Lakists. Robinson, as we have seen, was commissioned to offer Southey the editorship of the Times. This was the poet's reply :

"Your letter may be answered without deliberation. No emolument, however great, would induce me to give up a country life and those pursuits in literature to which the studies of so many years have been directed. Indeed, I should consider that portion of my time which is given up to temporary politics grievously misspent if the interests at stake were less important. We are in danger of an insurrection of the Yahoos; it is the fault of the Government that such a caste should exist in the midst of a civilised society, but till the breed can be mended it must be curbed, and that too with a strong hand.”—Diary, vol. ii. p. 82.

Although we have no sympathy with Cobden's dictum, that a file of the Times is worth more than the whole of Thucydides, we may fairly take exception to Southey's estimate of contemporary politics, and of the position of the journalist. Southey wrote the history of Portugal in preference to writing leaders in the Times. By so doing he produced a book, which few persons read at the time of publication, and which no one reads now, upon a country in which but one Englishman out of a thousand takes any interest. By so doing he lost a splendid opportunity of influencing his contemporaries and fellow-countrymen, of helping to suppress the insurrection which he feared, and to guide the politics and mark the history of England. He chose to be a reviewer of past events in a country which was nothing to him rather than the director of present events in his native land. Far be it from us to depreciate the work of the historian, nevertheless we must protest against the historian's unworthy estimate of the journalist. While Southey thus peremptorily refused Robinson's offer, he made an offer to Robinson that he should write in the Quarterly Review. This proposal was more favourably received than the other, although it does not appear if Robinson actually availed himself of it. He was essentially a talker, not a writer. Early in life he wrote anonymously a book on Craniology, and he occasionally contributed articles to the magazines. But when at the ripe age of sixty-three he felt himself bound to appear in behalf of Clarkson against the sons and biographers of Wilberforce, and to claim for his friend some portion of that credit which they monopolised for their father, he was as nervous as a young lady at her first party. He wrote to Wordsworth:

"I have heard of a lady by birth being reduced to cry muffins to sell' for a subsistence. She used to go out a-nights with her face hid up in her cloak, and then she would in the faintest voice utter her cry. Somebody passing by heard her cry Muffins to sell, muffins to sell! Oh, I hope nobody hears me.' This is just my feeling whenever I write anything. I think it is a piece of capital luck when those whose opinions I most value never chance to hear of my writing. On this occasion I must put my name, but I have refused everybody the putting it on the title-page. And I feel quite delighted that I shall be out of the way when the book comes out. It is remarkable how very different I feel as to talk and writing. No one talks with more ease and confidence than I do, no one writes with more difficulty and distrust."Diary, vol. iii. p. 152.

In the same year that this letter was written, 1838, Robinson made a continental tour with Southey and other friends,

including John Kenyon, the wealthy littérateur who, dying about twenty years later, left the Brownings over £10,000 and £130,000 besides in legacies. The other members of the party were greatly surprised and grieved to find "to how great a degree the mind of the laureate (Southey) was departed." He seemed to take small interest in what he saw, and saw very little. He died five years later, mourned probably by no one so much as Walter Savage Landor.

The intimacy between Robinson and Landor began in 1830, when the first was making a tour in Italy. He thus describes the event in his diary:

" August 14th.-Met to-day the one man living in Florence whom I was anxious to know. This was Walter Savage Landor, a man of unquestionable genius, but very questionable good sense; or, rather, one of those unmanageable men,—

"Blest with huge stores of wit,

Who want as much again to manage it."

After mentioning that he was introduced as the friend of Southey, Robinson continues in a subsequent reminiscence:

"He (Landor) was a man of florid complexion, with large full eyes, and altogether a leonine man and with a fierceness of tone well suited to his name; his decisions being confident, and on all subjects, whether of taste or life, unqualified, each standing for itself, not caring whether it was in harmony with what had gone before or would follow from the same oracular lips. But why should I trouble myself to describe him? He is painted by a master hand in Dickens's novel, Bleak House, now in course of publication, where he figures as Mr. Boythorn. The combination of superficial ferocity and inherent tenderness, so admirably portrayed in Bleak House, still at first strikes every stranger (for twenty-two years have not materially changed him), no less than his perfect frankness and reckless indifference to what he says."-Diary, vol. ii. pp. 401, 402.

What Landor thought of Robinson we learn from a letter which the first sent to a friend at Rome. He wrote :

"I wish some accident may have brought you acquainted with Mr. Robinson, a friend of Wordsworth. He was a barrister, and notwithstanding, both honest and modest; a character I never heard of before; indeed I have never met with one who was either."-Diary, vol. ii. p. 490.

This intimacy thus begun lasted more than thirty years. Rich was the intellectual treat to Bathonians when Robinson came to pay a visit to Landor at Bath, and the other guests had an opportunity of hearing the conversation of these two men, who, though so different, had so much in common.

On

one occasion Robinson differed from Landor on a subject which was always dear to the heart of the first-Wordsworth's poetical fame. Landor was angry because he thought Wordsworth had stolen from him, and spoilt in the stealing, a very beautiful metaphor. As was his wont, he gave vent to his wrath in language of needless severity, which was embodied in A Satire. The poem aroused Robinson to do battle in his friend's behalf.

Robinson's admiration of Wordsworth (so lasting that at ninety years of age he would quote whole passages from the poet's writings) was equalled, if at all, only by his admiration of Flaxman. Robinson thought him one of the purest, the noblest, the best of men. He died in 1826, and his friend wrote a quarter of a century later:

"When Flaxman died his effects were sworn to be worth under £4,000, and I have been in the habit of citing his comparative poverty as a disgrace to the country, for while he died worth £4,000, Chantrey died worth above £150,000. Such is the different reward for genius and useful talent."-Diary, vol. ii. p. 136.

Canova depreciated Flaxman; but Samuel Rogers, no mean judge, placed the second above the first. Robinson thought Canova inferior even to Thorwaldsen, whom he met at Rome. One of the lasting achievements of Robinson's life, one of the few good works which gave him pride in the retrospect, was the collection of Flaxman's casts and the formation of the Flaxman Gallery in University College, London. Blake was another artist for whose genius Robinson had profound respect. At the same time Robinson knew perfectly well that Blake was insane. There was generally a sublime method in his insanity:

"Shall I," says Robinson in 1825, "call Blake artist, genius, or madman? Probably he is all. He has a most interesting appearance. He is now old (sixty-eight), pale, with a Socratic countenance, and an expression of great sweetness, though with something of languor about it except when animated, and then he has about him an air of inspiration."-Diary, vol. ii. p. 301.

Much of Blake's conversation is recorded by Robinson, and so well recorded that we regret all the more he has not set down more of the wise sayings of his other illustrious friends. In 1830 Robinson met at Bunsen's house in Rome "a tall man, with lank hair and sallow cheeks." "I pointed him out," says Robinson, "to a German as the specimen of an English Methodist. He laughed, and exclaimed, Why, that is the Roman Catholic convert Overbeck; a rigid ascetic and melancholy devotee.'" A very different man was Abraham

Cooper, who died a few months ago, the oldest of the R.A.'s. He was formerly a groom to Meux, the brewer, who, detecting him in the act of making portraits of his horses, would not keep him as a groom, but got him employment as a horse painter. He was before that a rider at Astley's. He went into the Academy to learn to draw with the boys. At that time he knew nothing of the mechanism of his art, nevertheless he soon made such progress that Flaxman predicted that he would become very eminent. Cooper scarcely rose to that level; but his merits were great, especially when his early disadvantages were taken into account. His appearance did not bespeak his origin. Flaxman introduced him to Lord Grey, and as the two stood talking together the sculptor could not discern any difference between the peer and the painter.

Robinson's acquaintance with O'Connell was one of the most interesting events of his life. It was while he was making a vacation tour in Ireland during the height of the agitation (1826) immediately preceding Catholic emancipation, that Robinson first saw the liberator. He went into the Cork law courts, and noticed prominent among the Bar “a thick-set, broad-faced, good-humoured, middle-aged person, who spoke with the air of one conscious of authority." It was Daniel O'Connell, and he and Robinson soon fell into conversation. Two days later, on taking his place in the coach to Killarney, Robinson heard a voice addressing him, "You must get down, Mr. Robinson, and sit by O'Connell in front. He insists on it." Nothing loth, the Englishman placed himself by the side of the Irishman. It was one of the most delightful journeys Robinson had ever experienced. He writes:

"There was sufficient difference between us to produce incessant controversy, and sufficient agreement to generate kindness and respect. Perceiving, at first, that he meant to have a long talk on the stirring topics of the day, I took an early opportunity of saying, 'In order that we should be on fair terms, as I know a great deal about you, and you know nothing about me, it is right that I should tell you that I am by education a Dissenter, that I have been brought up to think, and do think, the Roman Catholic Church the greatest enemy to civil and religious liberty, and that from a religious point of view it is the object of my abhorrence. But at the same time, you cannot have politically a warmer friend. I think emancipation your right. I do not allow myself to ask whether in like circumstances you would grant us what you demand. Emancipation is your right. And were I a Roman Catholic, there is no extremity I would not risk in order to get it."Diary, vol. ii. p. 338.