hosen pictures, without fancying it the very house imaged to
himself by the Roman poet, when, in illustration of man's mortality, he
says, "Linquenda est domus."' 'What is that you are saying?' replied Mr.
Rogers, whose years, between eighty and ninety, had not improved his
hearing. 'I was remarking that your house,' replied Wordsworth, 'always
reminds me of the Ode (more properly called an Elegy, though doubtless
the lyrical measure not unnaturally causes it to be included among
Horace's Odes) in which the Roman poet writes "Linquenda est domus;"
that is, since, ladies being present, a translation may be deemed
desirable, _The house is_, or _has to be, left_; and again, "et placens
uxor"--and the pleasing wife; though, as we must all regret, that part
of the quotation is not applicable on the present occasion.' The Town
Bard, on whom 'no angle smiled' more than the end of St. James's-place,
did not enter into the views of the Bard of the Mountains. His answer
was what children call 'making a great face,' and the ejaculation,
'Don't talk Latin in, the society of ladies.' When I was going away he
remarked, 'What a stimulus the mountain air has on the appetite! I made
a sign to Edmund to hand him the cutlets a second time. I was afraid he
would stick his fork into that beautiful woman who sat next him.'
Wordsworth never resented a jest at his own expense. Once when we had
knocked three times in vain at the door of a London house, I exclaimed,
quoting his sonnet written on Westminster-bridge,

'Dear God, the very houses seem asleep.'

He laughed heartily, then smiled gravely, and lastly recounted the
occasion, and described the early morning on which that sonnet was
written. He did not recite more than a part of it, to the accompaniment
of distant cab and carriage; and I thought that the door was opened too
soon.

Wordsworth, despite his dislike to great cities, was attracted
occasionally in his later years

'To the proud margin of the Thames,
And Lambeth's venerable towers,'

where his society was courted by persons of the most different
character. But he complained bitterly of the great city. It was next to
impossible, he remarked, to tell the truth in it. 'Yesterday I was at
S. House: the Duchess of S., showing me the pictures, observed, "This is
the portrait of my brother" (naming him), "and it is considered very
like." To this I assented, partly perhaps in absence of mind, but
partly, I think, with a