was hardly free
to censure. No wonder he wrote of his performance: "Forster will think
it too lukewarm; others the reverse." As it happened, the amiable
Forster was enchanted.

"For upwards of three-and-thirty years," says Mr. Elwin in this review
(_Q. R._, vol. 132, p. 125), "Mr. Forster was the incessant companion
and confidential adviser of Dickens; the friend to whom he had
recourse in every difficulty, personal and literary; and before whom
he spread, without reserve, every fold of his mind. _No man's life has
ever been better known to a biographer...._ To us it appears that a
more faithful biography could not be written. Dickens is seen in his
pages precisely as he is showed in his ordinary intercourse."

Both Elwin and his friend had that inflexibility of principle in
criticism and literary utterance which they adhered to as though it
were a matter of high morals. This feeling contrasts with the easy
adaptability of our day, when the critic so often has to shape his
views according to interested aims. He indeed will hold in his views,
but may not deem it necessary to produce them. I could recall
instances in both men of this sternness of opinion. Forster knew no
compromise in such matters; though I fancy in the case of people of
title, for whom, as already mentioned, he had a weakness, or of pretty
women, he may have occasionally given way. I remember when Elwin was
writing his fine estimate of his deceased friend, Mrs. Forster in deep
distress came to tell me that he insisted on describing her husband as
"the son of a butcher." In vain had she entreated him to leave this
matter aside. Even granting its correctness, what need or compulsion
to mention it? It was infinitely painful to her. But it was not true:
Forster's father was a large "grazier" or dealer in cattle. Elwin,
however, was inflexible: some Newcastle alderman had hunted up entries
in old books, and he thought the evidence convincing.

Another incident connected with the memory of her much-loved husband,
that gave this amiable woman much poignant distress, was a statement
made by Mr. Furnival, the Shakesperian, that Browning had been
employed by Forster to write the account of Strafford, in the
collection of Lives. He had been told this by Browning himself.
Nevertheless, she set all her friends to work; had papers, letters,
etc., ransacked for evidence, but with poor result. The probability
was that Forster would have disdained such aid; on the ot