over by Mrs. Montagu,
whom Dr. Johnson dubbed Queen of the Blues; Mrs. Carter, borrowing, by
right of years, her matron's plumes; Mrs. Chapone, sensible, ugly, and
benevolent; the beautiful Mrs. Sheridan; the lively, absurd, incisive
Mrs. Cholmondeley; sprightly, witty Mrs. Thrale; and Hannah More, coiner
of guineas, both as saint and sinner: a most piquant, trenchant, and
entertaining society it was, and well might be, since the bullion of
genius was so largely wrought into the circulating medium of small talk;
but a society which, from sheer lack of vision, must have entertained
its angels unawares. Such was the current which caught up this
simple-hearted painter, this seer of unutterable things, this "eternal
child,"--caught him up only to drop him, with no creditable, but with
very credible haste. As a lion, he was undoubtedly thrice welcome in
Rathbone Place; but when it was found that the lion would not roar there
gently, nor be bound by their silken strings, but rather shook his mane
somewhat contemptuously at his would-be tamers, and kept, in their grand
saloons, his freedom of the wilderness, he was straightway suffered to
return to his fitting solitudes. One may imagine the consternation that
would be caused by this young fellow turning to Mrs. Carter, whose "talk
was all instruction," or to Mrs. Chapone, bent on the "improvement of
the mind," or to Miss Streatfield, with her "nose and notions _a la
Grecque_," and abruptly inquiring, "Madam, did you ever see a fairy's
funeral?" "Never, Sir!" responds the startled Muse. "I have," pursues
Blake, as calmly as if he were proposing to relate a _bon mot_ which he
heard at Lady Middleton's rout last night. "I was walking alone in my
garden last night: there was great stillness among the branches and
flowers, and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard a low and
pleasant sound, and knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad
leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures of
the size and color of green and gray grasshoppers, bearing a body laid
out on a rose-leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared.
It was a fairy funeral." Or they are discussing, somewhat pompously,
Herschel's late discovery of Uranus, and the immense distances of
heavenly bodies, when Blake bursts out uproariously, "'Tis false! I was
walking down a lane the other day, and at the end of it I touched the
sky with my stick." Truly, for this wild man, who