has shown manifestly a flash of genius in "The Scarlet
Letter;" but, so far as I know, it was well-nigh a solitary one.

One further curious illustration of an uncongenial guest is this:
Alexander Smith wrote a "Life Drama," full of sparkling poetic gems,
which at once made him popular, apparently with justice enough. I asked
him down to Albury, made much of him, praised warmly sundry _morceaux_
of his (which I had marked in my copy), and to my astonishment received
the brusque reply, "O, you like those, do you? I shall alter them in
next edition:" as I found afterwards he did. He was a common-looking
man, with a rough manner, and a squint. As he seemed upset,--though why
I could not guess,--I tried in other ways to please him; as, by a ramble
in the woods and a drive in the waggonette: but all would not do,--his
day came to an end as gloomily as it began. Long after, I stumbled upon
the reason. I had then for the first time read Bailey's "Festus," and
found some passages therein very similar to Alexander's; thereafter,
other little bits from some other poets (I think Tennyson was one)
struck me. Little wonder, then, that I heard no more of Smith,--who
clearly had thought himself found out,--and so received my first
ignorance of his plagiaristic tendency as if I had known all about it:
and years after Aytoun had (as I was told) avenged justice by that
cleverest of spasmodic poetries, "Firmilian, by Percy Jones"--a
burlesque on Alexander Smith, and a book which the world has too
willingly let die. Let no one, however, after all this, fancy that I am
unaware of Alexander Smith's true merit. He very neatly fitted into his
mosaic word-pictures the titbits he had culled in his commonplace-book
out of many poets, and so utilised them. A self-made and self-taught
man, "elbow to elbow," as he told me, "with Jack, Tom, and Harry in a
workshop," as a designer of patterns, he had well and wisely made the
most of his scant opportunities of culture, and it is only a pity that
he did not allude to something of this in a preface.

It is not for me to recall here much about the inevitable hospitalities
of an old country house, to which a not unkindly host often invited
English and foreign friends, whom something to do with authorship had
made celebrities. Do I not pleasantly remember the jolly haymaking, when
old Jerdan, calling out, "More hay, more hay!" covered Grace Greenwood
with a haycock overturned, and had greeted a sculptor gu