hat they would have made him, if he
had been so minded, at least as great a writer as he was a painter. The
gentlest and most modest of men, the freshest as to his generous
appreciation of young aspirants and the frankest and largest hearted as
to his peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble thought, gallantly
sustaining the true dignity of his vocation, without one grain of
self-ambition, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, 'in wit
a man, simplicity a child,'--no artist of whatsoever denomination, I
make bold to say, ever went to his rest leaving a golden memory more
pure from dross, or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the
art-goddess whom he worshipped." These were the last public words of
Dickens, and he could not have spoken any worthier.

Upon his appearance at the dinner of the Academy had followed some
invitations he was led to accept; greatly to his own regret, he told me
on the night (7th of May) when he read to us the fifth number of _Edwin
Drood_; for he was now very eager to get back to the quiet of Gadshill.
He dined with Mr. Motley, then American minister; had met Mr. Disraeli
at a dinner at Lord Stanhope's; had breakfasted with Mr. Gladstone; and
on the 17th was to attend the Queen's ball with his daughter. But she
had to go there without him; for on the 16th I had intimation of a
sudden disablement. "I am sorry to report, that, in the old preposterous
endeavour to dine at preposterous hours and preposterous places, I have
been pulled up by a sharp attack in my foot. And serve me right. I hope
to get the better of it soon, but I fear I must not think of dining with
you on Friday. I have cancelled everything in the dining way for this
week, and that is a very small precaution after the horrible pain I have
had and the remedies I have taken." He had to excuse himself also from
the General Theatrical Fund dinner, where the Prince of Wales was to
preside; but at another dinner a week later, where the King of the
Belgians and the Prince were to be present, so much pressure was put
upon him that he went, still suffering as he was, to dine with Lord
Houghton.

We met for the last time on Sunday the 22nd of May, when I dined with
him in Hyde Park Place. The death of Mr. Lemon, of which he heard that
day, had led his thoughts to the crowd of friendly companions in letters
and art who had so fallen from the ranks since we played Ben Jonson
together that we were left almost alone. "And no