After having duly admired the tree he turned to the Rossetti crayons on the walls of the rooms; but although he talked much about ‘The Spirit of the Rainbow’ and the design from the same beautiful model which William
Sharp has christened ‘Forced Music,’ the loveliness of which attracted him not a little, I perceived that he had something else that he wanted to talk about, and allowed him to lead the conversation up to it. To my surprise I found that, so far from having perceived how much he had interested me, he had imagined that my attitude towards him was constrained, and had explained it to his own discomfort after the following fashion: “Watts has an intimate friend of whose poetry I am a deep admirer—so deep indeed that some people, and not without reason, have said that my own poetry is unduly influenced by it. But an article by me in The Fortnightly goes out of its way to dub as a ‘minor poet’ the very writer to whose influence I have succumbed. It is the incongruity between my dubbing my idol a ‘minor poet’ and my real and most obvious admiration of his work that makes Watts, in spite of an external civility, feel unfriendly towards me. Yet there is no real incongruity, for it was the editor, G. H. Lewes, who, after my proof had been returned for press, interpolated the objectionable words about the minor poet.”
This was how he had been reasoning. When I laughed and told him to recast his syllogism—told him that I had never seen the article in question, and doubted whether my friend had—matters became very bright between us. He stayed to luncheon; we walked
on the Common; I showed him our Wimbledon sun-dews; in a word, I felt that I had discovered a richer gold mine than the richest in the world, a new friend. Had I then known him as well as I afterwards did, I should have been aware that he had a strong dash of the sensitive, not to say the morbid, in his nature. He had a habit of submitting almost every incident of his life to such an analysis as that I have been describing.
On another occasion, when years later he had a difference with a friend, I reminded him of the incident recorded above, and made him laugh by saying, “My dear Warren, you are so afraid of treading on people’s corns that you tread upon them.”
On first visiting him, as on many a subsequent occasion, I was struck by the variety of his intellectual interests, and the thoroughness with which he pursued them all. I have lately said in print what I fully believe—that he was the most learned of English poets, if learning means something more than mere scholarship. He was a skilled numismatist, and in 1862 published, through the Numismatic Society, ‘An Essay on Greek Federal Coinage,’ and an essay ‘On Some Coins of Lycia under Rhodian Domination and of the Lycian League.’ He even took an interest in book-plates, and actually, in 1880, published ‘A Guide to the Study of Book-Plates.’ I should not have been
at all surprised to learn that he was also writing a guide for the collectors of postage stamps.
At this time he had published a good deal of verse; for instance, ‘Eclogues and Monodramas’ in 1865; ‘Studies in Verse’ in 1866; ‘Orestes’ in 1867; a collection of poems called ‘Rehearsals’ in 1873; another collection, called ‘The Searching Net,’ in 1876. From this time, during many years, I saw him frequently, although, for a reason which it is not necessary to discuss here, he became seized with a deep dislike of the literary world and its doings, and I am not aware that he saw any literary man save myself and the late W. B. Scott, the bond between whom and himself was “book-plates”! Then he took to residing in the country. As a poet he seemed to be quite forgotten, save by students of poetry, until his name was revived by means of Mr. Miles’s colossal anthology ‘The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century,’ Mr. Miles, it seems, was a great admirer of Lord de Tabley’s poetry, and managed to reach the hermit in his cell. In the sixth volume of his work Mr. Miles gave a judicious selection from Lord de Tabley’s poems and an admirable essay upon them. The selection attracted a good deal of attention.
On finding that the public would listen to him, I urged him to bring out a volume of selected pieces from all his works, an idea which for some time he contested with his usual
pessimistic vigour. Having, however, set my heart upon it, I spoke upon the subject to Mr. John Lane, who at once saw his way to bring out such a volume at his own risk. To the poet’s astonishment the book was a success, and it at once passed into a second edition. In the spring of this year he was emboldened to bring out another volume of new poems, and his name became firmly re-established as a poet. It was after the success of the first book that he consulted me upon a question which was then upon his mind: Should he devote his future energies to literature or to making himself a position as a speaker in the Lords? He had lately had occasion to speak both in the country and in the Lords upon some local matter of importance, and his success had in some slight degree revived an old aspiration to plunge into the world of politics. He was a Liberal, and in 1868 he had contested—but unsuccessfully—Mid-Cheshire. This was on the first election for that division after the Reform Act of 1867. His support in a county so Conservative as Cheshire had really been very strong, but he never made another effort to get into Parliament. “You know my way,” he used to say. “I can make one spring—perhaps a pretty good spring—but not more than one.”