But it was in that dreamland of Rogers' that Cooper's heart found its greatest joy. There
he met the artists,—Sir Thomas Lawrence, handsome and well-mannered; Leslie, mild, caring little for aught save his tastes and affections; and Newton, who "thinks himself" English. Here, dining, he meets again Sir Walter Scott, his son-in-law and later biographer, Mr. Lockhart, Sir Walter's daughters, Mrs. Lockhart and Miss Anne Scott. He says Mrs. Lockhart "is just the woman to have success in Paris, by her sweet, simple manners." He had a stately chat with Mrs. Siddons, and Sir James Mackintosh he called "the best talker I have ever seen; the only man I have yet met in England who appears to have any clear or definite notions of us." Rare indeed were these
flash-lights of genius that Samuel Rogers charmed to his "feasts of reason and flow of soul."
With Mr. Southby Cooper went to see Coleridge at Highgate, where, he says, "our reception was frank and friendly, the poet coming out to meet us in his morning-gown. I rose to take a nearer view of a little picture, when Mr. Coleridge told me it was by his friend Allston." From the bard of Highgate they went to see Miss Joanna Baillie at Hampstead, and found her "a little, quiet woman, a deeply-seated earnestness about her that bespoke the higher impulses within; no one would have thought her little person contained the elements of a tragedy."