d inn he tells how the rustic
fare and the quaint architecture gave additional piquancy to Congreve's
wit. He remembers, too, the spot at which he first read Mrs. Inchbald's
'Simple Story;' how he walked out to escape from one of the tenderest
parts, in order to return again with double relish.

'An old crazy hand-organ,' he adds, 'was playing "Robin Adair," a summer
shower dropped manna on my head, and slaked my feverish thirst of
happiness.' He looks back to his first familiarity with his favourites
as an old man may think of his honeymoon. The memories of his own
feelings, of his author's poetry, and of the surrounding scenery, are
inextricably fused together. The sight of an old volume, he says,
sometimes shakes twenty years off his life; he sees his old friends
alive again, the place where he read the book, the day when he got it,
the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky. To these old favourites he
remained faithful, except that he seems to have tired of the glitter of
Junius. Burke's politics gave him some severe twinges. He says, in one
place, that he always tests the sense and candour of a Liberal by his
willingness to admit the greatness of Burke. He adds, as a note to the
Essay in which this occurs, that it was written in a 'fit of extravagant
candour,' when he thought that he could be more than just to an enemy
without betraying a cause. He oscillates between these views as his
humour changes. He is absurdly unjust to Burke the politician; but he
does not waver in his just recognition of the marvellous power of the
greatest--I should almost say the only great--political writer in the
language. The first time he read a passage from Burke, he said, This is
true eloquence. Johnson immediately became shelved, and Junius 'shrunk
up into little antithetic points and well-tuned sentences. But Burke's
style was forked and playful like the lightning, crested like the
serpent.' He is never weary of Burke, as he elsewhere says; and, in
fact, he is man enough to recognise genuine power when he meets it. To
another great master he yields with a reluctance which is an involuntary
compliment. The one author whom he admitted into his Pantheon after his
youthful enthusiasm had cooled was unluckily the most consistent of
Tories. Who is there, he asks, that admires the author of 'Waverley'
more than I do? Who is there that despises Sir Walter Scott more? The
Scotch novels, as they were then called, fairly overpowered him. The