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 guest appropriately and wittily enough with “Here we are, Durham, all mustered!” the “we” being besides others, Camilla Toulmin, George Godwin, and Francis Bennoch?  Do I not remember how much surprised we were at the melodies whereof an old piano was capable when touched by Otto Goldsmidt?  Can I forget, also, how marvellously a young Canadian, Joseph Macdougall, of Ottawa, extemporised on the same piano as only a genius can (Mr. Assher was another), and sent me afterwards, as a memory, a vast volume of American photographs, whereof he had munificently prepaid the enormous sum of L6, 18s. for postage?  And was not our village stirred to its depths by the visit to Albury House of two black gentlemen and a blue,—­all in evening dress?

It was President Roberts of Monrovia, attended by his secretary and chief minister; for they came cordially to return thanks to one who had helped a little in slave emancipation, under the influences of Elliott Cresson, Dr. Hodgkin Garrison, and others,—­and, moreover, had given a gold medal for African literature, biennially to be competed for by emancipated slaves;—­whereof I have heard very little, since (by the volunteered assistance of Mr. Taylor, the seal engraver) I gave it many years ago:  the medal was as large as a crown piece.  President Benson, also of Liberia, a magnificent ebon specimen of humanity, visited me with his staff, not long before his lamented death—­it was said, by murder.