Alluding to Grattan's dying advice to his son, 'Always be ready with the pistol,' Moore asked, 'Is it not wonderful that, with all the agitation in Ireland, we have had no such men since his time? The whole country in convulsion--people's lives, fortune, religion at stake, and not a gleam of talent from one's year's end to another. It is natural for sparks to be struck out in a time of violence like this--but Ireland, for all that is worth living for, is dead! You can scarcely reckon Sheil of the calibre of the spirits of old, and O'Connell, with all his faults, stands alone in his glory.'
In the drawing-room, after dinner, some allusion to the later Platonists caused D'Israeli to flare up. His wild black eyes glistened, and his nervous lips poured out eloquence, while a whole ottomanful of noble exquisites listened in amazement. He gave an account of Thomas Taylor, one of the last of the Platonists, who had worshipped Jupiter in a back-parlour in London a few years before. In his old age he was turned out of his lodgings, for attempting, as he said, to worship his gods according to the dictates of his conscience, his landlady having objected to his sacrificing a bull to Jupiter in her parlour. The company laughed at this story as a good invention, but Dizzy assured them it was literally true, and gave his father as his authority. Meanwhile Moore 'went glittering on' with criticisms upon Grisi and the Opera, and the subject of music being thus introduced, he was led, with great difficulty, to the piano. Willis describes his singing as 'a kind of admirable recitative, in which every shade of thought is syllabled and dwelt upon, and the sentiment of the song goes through your blood, warming you to the very eyelids, and starting your tears if you have a soul or sense in you. I have heard of women fainting at a song of Moore's; and if the burden of it answered by chance to a secret in the bosom of the listener, I should think that the heart would break with it. After two or three songs of Lady Blessington's choice, he rambled over the keys a while, and then sang 'When first I met thee' with a pathos that beggars description. When the last word had faltered out, he rose and took Lady Blessington's hand, said Good-night, and was gone before a word was uttered. For a full minute after he closed the door no one spoke. I could have wished for myself to drop silently asleep where I sat, with the tears in my eyes and the softness upon my heart.'
PART II
Having received invitations to stay with Lord Dalhousie and the Duke of Gordon, Willis went north at the beginning of September, 1834. The nominal attraction of Scotland he found, rather to his dismay, was the shooting. The guest, he observes, on arriving at a country-house, is asked whether he prefers a flint or a percussion lock, and a double-barrelled Manton is put into his hands; while after breakfast the ladies leave the table, wishing him good sport. 'I would rather have gone to the library,' says the Penciller. 'An aversion to walking, except upon smooth flag-stones, a poetical tenderness on the subject of putting birds "out of their misery," and hands much more at home with the goose-quill than the gun, were some of my private objections to the order of the day.' At Dalhousie, the son of the house, Lord Ramsay, and his American visitor were mutually astonished at each other's appearance when they met in the park, prepared for a morning's sport.
'From the elegant Oxonian I had seen at breakfast,' writes Willis, 'he (Lord Ramsay) was transformed into a figure something rougher than his Highland dependant, in a woollen shooting-jacket, pockets of any number and capacity, trousers of the coarsest plaid, hobnailed shoes and leather gaiters, and a habit of handling his gun that would have been respected on the Mississippi. My own appearance in high-heeled French boots and other corresponding gear, for a tramp over stubble and marsh, amused him equally; but my wardrobe was exclusively metropolitan, and there was no alternative.' It was hard and exciting work, the novice discovered, to trudge through peas, beans, turnips, and corn, soaked with showers, and muddied to the knees till his Parisian boots were reduced to the consistency of brown paper. He came home, much to his own relief, without having brought the blood of his host's son and heir on his head, and he made a mental note never to go to Scotland again without hobnailed boots and a shooting-jacket.
On leaving Dalhousie Willis spent a few days in Edinburgh, where he breakfasted with Professor Wilson, alias Christopher North. The Professor, he says, talked away famously, quite oblivious of the fact that the tea was made, and the breakfast-dishes were smoking on the table. He spoke much of Blackwood, who then lay dying, and described him as a man of the most refined literary taste, whose opinion of a book he would trust before that of any one he knew. Wilson inquired if his guest had made the acquaintance of Lockhart. 'I have not,' replied Willis. 'He is almost the only literary man in London I have not met; and I must say, as the editor of the Quarterly Review, and the most unfair and unprincipled critic of the day, I have no wish to know him. I never heard him well spoken of. I have probably met a hundred of his acquaintances, but I have not yet seen one who pretended to be his friend.' Wilson defended the absent one, who, he said, was the mildest and most unassuming of men, and dissected a book for pleasure, without thinking of the feelings of the author.
The breakfast had been cooling for an hour when the Professor leant back, with his chair still towards the fire, and 'seizing the teapot as if it were a sledge-hammer, he poured from one cup to the other without interrupting the stream, overrunning both cup and saucer, and partly flooding the tea-tray. He then set the cream towards me with a carelessness that nearly overset it, and in trying to reach an egg from the centre of the table, broke two. He took no notice of his own awkwardness, but drank his cup of tea at a single draught, ate his egg in the same expeditious manner, and went on talking of the "Noctes," and Lockhart, and Blackwood, as if eating his breakfast were rather a troublesome parenthesis in his conversation.' Wilson offered to give his guest letters to Wordsworth and Southey, if he intended to return by the Lakes. 'I lived a long time in their neighbourhood,' he said, 'and know Wordsworth perhaps as well as any one. Many a day I have walked over the hills with him, and listened to his repetition of his own poetry, which, of course, filled my mind completely at the time, and perhaps started the poetical vein in me, though I cannot agree with the critics that my poetry is an imitation of Wordsworth's.'
'Did Wordsworth repeat any other poetry than his own?'
'Never in a single instance, to my knowledge. He is remarkable for the manner in which he is wrapped up in his own poetical life. Everything ministers to it. Everything is done with reference to it. He is all and only a poet.'