In the Journal entitled "Detached Thoughts," I find the tribute to his genius which he here mentions, as well as some others, thus interestingly dwelt upon.
"As far as fame goes (that is to say, living fame) I have had my share, perhaps—indeed, certainly—more than my deserts.
"Some odd instances have occurred to my own experience, of the wild and strange places to which a name may penetrate, and where it may impress. Two years ago (almost three, being in August or July, 1819,) I received at Ravenna a letter, in English verse, from Drontheim in Norway, written by a Norwegian, and full of the usual compliments, &c. &c. It is still somewhere amongst my papers. In the same month I received an invitation into Holstein from a Mr. Jacobsen (I think) of Hamburgh: also, by the same medium, a translation of Medora's song in The Corsair by a Westphalian baroness (not 'Thunderton-Tronck'), with some original verses of hers (very pretty and Klopstock-ish), and a prose translation annexed to them, on the subject of my wife:—as they concerned her more than me. I sent them to her, together with Mr. Jacobsen's letter. It was odd enough to receive an invitation to pass the summer in Holstein while in Italy, from people I never knew. The letter was addressed to Venice. Mr. Jacobsen talked to me of the 'wild roses growing in the Holstein summer.' Why then did the Cimbri and Teutones emigrate?
"What a strange thing is life and man! Were I to present myself at the door of the house where my daughter now is, the door would be shut in my face—unless (as is not impossible) I knocked down the porter; and if I had gone in that year (and perhaps now) to Drontheim (the furthest town in Norway), or into Holstein, I should have been received with open arms into the mansion of strangers and foreigners, attached to me by no tie but that of mind and rumour.
"As far as fame goes, I have had my share: it has indeed been leavened by other human contingencies, and this in a greater degree than has occurred to most literary men of a decent rank in life; but, on the whole, I take it that such equipoise is the condition of humanity."
Of the visit, too, of the American gentleman, he thus speaks in the same Journal.
"A young American, named Coolidge, called on me not many months ago. He was intelligent, very handsome, and not more than twenty years old, according to appearances; a little romantic, but that sits well upon youth, and mighty fond of poesy, as may be suspected from his approaching me in my cavern. He brought me a message from an old servant of my family (Joe Murray), and told me that he (Mr. Coolidge) had obtained a copy of my bust from Thorwaldsen at Rome, to send to America. I confess I was more flattered by this young enthusiasm of a solitary trans-Atlantic traveller, than if they had decreed me a statue in the Paris Pantheon (I have seen emperors and demagogues cast down from their pedestals even in my own time, and Grattan's name rased from the street called after him in Dublin); I say that I was more flattered by it, because it was single, unpolitical, and was without motive or ostentation,—the pure and warm feeling of a boy for the poet he admired. It must have been expensive, though;—I would not pay the price of a Thorwaldsen bust for any human head and shoulders, except Napoleon's, or my children's, or some 'absurd womankind's,' as Monkbarns calls them,—or my sister's. If asked why, then, I sat for my own?—Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse, Esq. and for no one else. A picture is a different matter;—every body sits for their picture;—but a bust looks like putting up pretensions to permanency, and smacks something of a hankering for public fame rather than private remembrance.
"Whenever an American requests to see me (which is not unfrequently), I comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom by their firmness without excess; and, secondly, because these trans-Atlantic visits, 'few and far between,' make me feel as if talking with posterity from the other side of the Styx. In a century or two the new English and Spanish Atlantides will be masters of the old countries, in all probability, as Greece and Europe overcame their mother Asia in the older or earlier ages, as they are called."
LETTER 437. TO MR. MURRAY.