HEREDITARY LACK OF TASTE.
This you will admit to be no ordinary measure of praise; and when you reflect that it is meted out by one of the greatest and most philosophic scholars of this or any other age—one whose acquaintance with literature (and literateurs), ancient and modern, is inferior to that of no other writer whatever, you will pardon me for lingering so long at Tent Lodge, and for taking such extensive liberties with the English Opium Eater’s charming papers on the “Society of the Lakes,” and, at the risk of greatly overstepping my usual limits, I must make one further quotation:—“The family of Tent Lodge continued to reside at Conistone for many years; and they were connected with the Lake literary clan chiefly through the Lloyds, and those who visited the Lloyds; for it is another and striking proof of the slight hold which Wordsworth, &c., had upon the public esteem in those days, that even Miss Smith, with all her excessive diffidence in judging of books and authors, never seems, in any one of her letters, to have felt the slightest interest about Wordsworth or Coleridge.” It is possible that Miss Smith’s indifference about Wordsworth was, like the rash humour of Cassius, something that her mother gave her, for it may be admitted to be a defect in the otherwise powerful understanding of that venerable lady—whose memory is cherished in Conistone with undiminishing respect and affection—that, to the close of her long life, she always appeared to regard our greatest of living bards with something more like contempt than anything else. Indeed I have seen a copy of verses written by her, parodizing one of his poems, perhaps the most beautiful and pathetic he has produced. If my memory does not betray me, the parody commenced somewhat in this way:—
“He dwelt by the untrodden ways,
Near Rydal’s grassy mead,
A Bard whom there were none to praise,
And very few to read.”
The imitation, you observe, is sufficiently close to the original.
AN ILLUSTRIOUS NAME.
I believe the only surviving member of Mrs Smith's once numerous family, is one of her sons, now Sir Chas. Smith, who has pitched his tent far from Tent Lodge. After Mrs Smith’s death, the villa was purchased by Mr Jas. G. Marshall, and, it is understood, is about to become the residence of a gentleman whose family name is not unknown in modern literature, nor yet in old romance.