eristic:--that it
would be very delightful; but that the world is lying, in a manner,
under the curse of God; that we have something else to do than to enjoy
fine prospects; and that, though it may be allowable to taste the
pleasure now and then, we ought to wait till the other life to enjoy
ourselves. Such was the strait-lacing in which the good man was forever
trying to compress his genial, buoyant, and grateful nature.--Scott came
again and again; and Wordsworth and Southey met to do him honor. The
tourist must remember the Swan Inn,--the white house beyond Grasmere,
under the skirts of Helvellyn. There Scott went daily for a glass of
something good, while Wordsworth's guest, and treated with the homely
fare of the Grasmere cottage. One morning, his host, himself, and
Southey went up to the Swan, to start thence with ponies for the ascent
of Helvellyn. The innkeeper saw them coming, and accosted Scott with
"Eh, Sir! ye're come early for your draught to-day!"--a disclosure which
was not likely to embarrass his host at all. Wordsworth was probably the
least-discomposed member of the party.--Charles Lamb and his sister once
popped in unannounced on Coleridge at Keswick, and spent three weeks in
the neighborhood. We can all fancy the little man on the top of Skiddaw,
with his mind full as usual of quips and pranks, and struggling with the
emotions of mountain-land, so new and strange to a Cockney, such as he
truly described himself. His loving readers do not forget his statement
of the comparative charms of Skiddaw and Fleet Street; and on the spot
we quote his exclamations about the peak, and the keen air there, and
the look over into Scotland, and down upon a sea of mountains which made
him giddy. We are glad he came and enjoyed a day, which, as he said,
would stand out like a mountain in his life; but we feel that he could
never have followed his friends hither,--Coleridge and Wordsworth,--and
have made himself at home. The warmth of a city and the hum of human
voices all day long were necessary to his spirits. As to his passage at
arms with Southey,--everybody's sympathies are with Lamb; and he
only vexes us by his humility and gratitude at being pardoned by the
aggressor, whom he had in fact humiliated in all eyes but his own. It
was one of Southey's spurts of insolent bigotry; and Lamb's plea for
tolerance and fair play was so sound as to make it a poor affectation in
Southey to assume a pardoning air; but, if Lamb's