ss
Betham, but many waters were to flow under the restless philosopher
before he could swim into her ken again.

It was in 1808, in fact, when he was living in London (at the
_Courier_ office, 348, Strand), and in the midst of his second course
of lectures, that the intercourse was renewed--or rather it is there
that _A House of Letters_ enables us to pick it up. We find him then
writing in this kind of strain to Matilda:--

"What joy would it not be to you, or to me, Miss Betham, to
meet a Milton in a future state, and with that reverence
due to a superior, pour forth our deep thanks for the noble
feelings he had aroused in us, for the impossibility of many
mean and vulgar feelings and objects which his writings had
secured us!"

The Americans call that sort of thing poppycock, which seems a useful
phrase. No doubt there was more of it, though it is precisely there,
without subscription or signature, that the Editor of _A House of
Letters_ thinks fit to conclude. He has much to learn of the duties of
editorship, among other things, as we shall have to note before long,
reasonable care in recording and printing his originals. Upon that
letter, at any rate, _post_ if not _propter_, Miss Betham proposed to
the philosopher that he should sit to her, and that, with some demur,
he promised to do. An appointment was made to that end, and punctually
broken. Then came this letter of excuse, which should have been
worth many a miniature, being indeed a full-length portrait done by a
master-hand:--

"Dear Miss Betham,--Not my will, but accident and necessity
made me a truant from my promise. I was to have left Merton,
in Surrey, at half-past eight on Tuesday morning with a Mr.
Hall, who would have driven me in his chaise to town by ten;
but having walked an unusual distance on the Monday, and
talked and exerted myself in spirits that have been long
unknown to me, on my return to my friend's house, being
thirsty, I drank at least a quart of lemonade; the consequence
was that all Tuesday morning, till indeed two o'clock in the
afternoon, I was in exceeding pain, and incapable of quitting
my room, or dismissing the hot flannels applied to my
body...."

This was no ordinary philosopher; but the chapter is not yet full.

He left Merton, he says, at five, walked stoutly on, was detained an
hour and a half on Clapham Common, "in an act of mere humanity," an