remarks respecting the late Mr. Haydon's visit to Edinburgh and its presumed effect upon his intimacy with Hunt, and says: “There is not the slightest ground for any such statement. My father's separation from Leigh Hunt took place in 1816, and, the causes being now as fully known to me as they were at the time to the late Horace Smith, I am quite of Horace Smith's opinion, as expressed in a letter to my father, viz., that I am astounded at the forbearance' my father 'so long displayed.'" But what Mr. Haydon desires to point out especially is that while the separation of his father from Leigh Hunt took place in 1816, it was not until 1820 that his father paid his first visit to Edinburgh. Mr. Haydon denies that there was any similar separation at the same time and from the same cause between his father and Keats, and declares that there never was any real separation between his father and Keats as there was between his father and Leigh Hunt. "My father," he says, "only made the acquaintance of Keats in the year 1816, the year of his separation from Leigh Hunt and four years before he visited Edinburgh." Mr. Haydon then adds: "Into the grave reasons which subsequently induced my father to beg Keats to choose between. himself and Leigh Hunt I need not now enter. Suffice it to say that my father only saw Keats when Keats came to my father's house, but that on hearing Keats was seriously ill my father went out to see him at Hampstead for the last time." Coming to another point Mr. Haydon says: "As to the 'odious detraction' of which Mr. Cowden Clarke now complains for the first time that I am aware of, it must be remembered that it is Mr. Tom Taylor and not my father who is responsible for its publication. The passage is not in Mr. Haydon's Autobiography, but in his Life, edited by Tom Taylor (1852), and was printed, with alterations and omissions, from his MS. Diary. One of these omissions is exceedingly important, as, if the passage in which it occurs had been printed entire, it would have appeared that my father's authority for the 'scandal' was no less a person than Keats himself!". In reference to Mr. Clarke's reply to what he describes as Haydon's detraction of Keats, my correspondent thinks that the claret in question might have been drunk at a friend's house, or at an hotel, or bought without Mr Clarke's knowledge for consumption at home; that the cost of both claret and cayenne among his domestic expenses need not have occasioned Keats a regret or a self-reproof worth mentioning; and that the inconsistency of the story with Mr. Clarke's non-perception of even a tendency to imprudent self-indulgence in Keats might be easily explained by supposing "what," he adds, "is highly probable from the manner in which my father records the story, that the whole thing was a mere freak of sensuality, a passing outbreak of folly, quite consistent with habitual soberness and temperance." In conclusion Mr. Haydon claims the right to prefer his father's fresh recollections to those of Mr. Clarke, which he conceives may have suffered by the lapse of time. The public interest in the life and character of Benjamin Haydon is hardly inferior to that in the too brief career of the, in his way, almost incomparable young poet Keats; and at the risk even of touching on painful points of controversy I do not hesitate to put in print the tenour and the salient points of the letter with which Benjamin Haydon's son has favoured me. THERE is something very sad in the report of a sale of autographs which took place in London the other day. We read that amongst the letters disposed of was one from Henry Fielding "complaining of money disappointments"; one from De Foe "complaining of his treatment"; one from Goldsmith "giving a doleful account of his travels on the Continent"; one from Sterne requesting a loan of £50; and one from Swift setting forth that such was his poverty that "if I come to More Park, it must be on foot." It would be impossible to name five men who stand higher in the ranks of English classical literature than those here mentioned. And yet when by chance odd letters from them turn up at a sale by auction a century or so after their death, we find them with one accord bewailing the straits in which poverty has landed them. Nine guineas Swift's letter brought; a sum that would have taken him to More Park in a postchaise had it been forthcoming in the moment of need. I wonder how much will be paid at auction in 1974 for a letter from Charles Dickens in which "the distinguished novelist mentions that he earned in three years £30,000 by the reading of chapters from books for which he had already been paid a princely price." A HARD-WORKING journalist writes to me with a grievance. It is not a new one, but it is one that does not mend by time or use. His profession demands of him the constant handling of the names of great men-especially statesmen, and he thinks it very hard upon him that distinguished men should contract the habit of changing their names-like marriageable maidens. So far as I can catch the grain of his complaint, these things did not disturb him so much when he was a younger man. While the school habit of picking up new facts and using them like old ones was upon him he did not take these things so hard, and it was a rather amusing embarrassment than otherwise to drop Lord John Russell and take up with Earl Russell. But the more mature faculties-though, of course, maturity of intellect has its advantages-do not relish these feats of mental legerdemain, if I may so use the expression. The hereditary principle is stumbling-block enough; for my friend has been a constant writer on political topics while two Lord Stanleys, each earning high distinction for the name, have in turn become distinguished as the Earl of Derby; but here he is assisted, or at all events feels that he ought to be, by a close familiarity with the family histories and family names of the English aristocracy. But what is he to do with such cases as those of Lord Aberdare and Baron Hampton? He thinks his task is hard enough without learning at his time of life to look upon Mr. Bruce and Sir John Pakington as convertible terms with Lord Aberdare and Baron Hampton. There is a certain wear and tear of mind in associating the new names with the familiar characters. Lord Chelmsford is known to a generation which has forgotten Sir Frederick Thesiger; but at the late Lord Lytton's funeral in Westminster Abbey an elderly man was asked, in my hearing, who was the aged gentleman whom Dean Stanley called to a place near him during the reading of the service, and the reply was, "I cannot remember his present name, but I used to know him as Sir Frederick Thesiger." He who had asked the question was a young man, and could not remember who was Sir Frederick Thesiger; but a gleam of light broke over his countenance when another bystander informed him that the distinguished personage was the great Lord Chelmsford. It must be a young man, or one very familiar with Chancery proceedings and the doings of the House of Lords, to whom the name of Lord Selborne suggests the same train of ideas as that of Sir Roundell Palmer. Indeed, I am not sure that men do not forfeit certain elements of fame by the change. Henry Brougham's name remained practically unaltered, and there is perfect unity in our conception of the man's career, varied and full of versatility as it was; but even as one of the bystanders at Westminster Abbey to whom I have referred was oblivious of Lord Chelmsford, and the other knew not Sir Frederick Thesiger, is it not true that in some sense the honourable career of Sir Roundell Palmer is closed, and that Lord Selborne has to earn new honours for his title? Lord Selborne as well as most men can afford to begin afresh, though in doing so he leaves behind him enough to make one or two good reputations; but Sir John Pakington lived till seventyfive years of age before he turned over as best he might his honours to Lord Hampton, and though I hope Lord Hampton may live long to adorn his place in the second estate of the realm, he can hardly hope to build up a new fame under the tardily bestowed title. A GENTLEMAN of Dutch nativity and polyglot learning favours me with a note touching Mr. Sala's philological speculations which I quoted last month with respect to the practice of using or omitting to use the article before Czar or Tsar. "As a rule,” he says, "the Dutch speak of the Emperor of Russia (Keizer van Rusland), just as they would speak of the Emperor of Morocco, of Austria, of France, &c. But when they write or speak of Peter the Great, who spent some time in Holland, they invariably drop the Keizer and use Czar. This is then used without any article, definite or indefinite, precisely as in Russian. Holland's greatest novelist, the late Jacob van Lennep, who, more than any other writer, adapted his orthography to pronunciation and etymology, was in the habit of spelling Tsaar, as no doubt the word is pronounced by the Emperor's subjects; indeed a Polish nobleman who knows Russian well informs me that Tsaar is the correct pronunciation." THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE MAY, 1874. OLYMPIA. BY R. E. FRANCILLON, AUTHOR OF "EARL'S DENE," "PEARL AND EMERALD," "ZELDA'S FORTUNE," &c. PART II.-LACHESIS. BOOK I. CINDERELLA. CHAPTER III. Venus the mother is of Love, And yet his slave must be : And still the Parcine Lawe descends, MEETING like this was hardly calculated to make small midshipman of three years ago, and not this disreputable looking young man. Nor had Gerald, for his part, expected to fall from the coach into the arms of a family quarrel on the lawn of home. His mother threw herself upon his neck, but he was too conscious of his plaister and too careful to keep the right side of his face upwards to give his return-embrace a very filial air. Then his father shook his hand with extra heartiness, as if to assure him that, in spite of appearances, they were very jolly together all the same, and his sister gave him her greeting as well as his black patch allowed. VOL. XII., N.S. 1874. L L |