y
pass away, but against my wish it had been communicated to him, and I
had difficulty in keeping within judicious bounds his extreme and very
natural wrath.

A few days later (the 15th) he wrote, "I have been rather surprised of
late to have applications from Roman Catholic clergymen, demanding
(rather pastorally, and with a kind of grave authority) assistance,
literary employment, and so forth. At length it struck me that, through
some channel or other, I must have been represented as belonging to that
religion. Would you believe that in a letter from Lamert, at Cork, to my
mother, which I saw last night, he says, 'What do the papers mean by
saying that Charles is demented, and, further, _that he has turned Roman
Catholic_?'--!" Of the begging-letter-writers, hinted at here, I ought
earlier to have said something. In one of his detached essays he has
described, without a particle of exaggeration, the extent to which he
was made a victim by this class of swindler, and the extravagance of the
devices practiced on him; but he has not confessed, as he might, that
for much of what he suffered he was himself responsible, by giving so
largely, as at first he did, to almost every one who applied to him.
What at last brought him to his senses in this respect, I think, was the
request made by the adventurer who had exhausted every other expedient,
and who desired finally, after describing himself reduced to the
condition of a traveling Cheap Jack in the smallest way of crockery,
that a donkey might be left out for him next day, which he would duly
call for. This I perfectly remember, and I much fear that the applicant
was the Daniel Tobin before mentioned.[35]

Many and delightful were other letters written from Broadstairs at this
date, filled with whimsical talk and humorous description relating
chiefly to an eccentric friend who stayed with him most of the time,
and is sketched in one of his published papers as Mr. Kindheart; but all
too private for reproduction now. He returned in the middle of October,
when we resumed our almost daily ridings, foregatherings with Maclise at
Hampstead and elsewhere, and social entertainments with Macready,
Talfourd, Procter, Stanfield, Fonblanque, Elliotson, Tennent, D'Orsay,
Quin, Harness, Wilkie, Edwin Landseer, Rogers, Sydney Smith, and Bulwer.
Of the genius of the author of _Pelham_ and _Eugene Aram_ he had, early
and late, the highest admiration, and he took occasion to express it
du