an ink-horn at his daughter, "to the complete denigration of her
habiliments," as he himself described it. Yet MILTON was a man of
high character and replete with moral uplift. I remember that my old
master, Professor Cawker of Aberdeen, once told me that as a child
he was liable to fits of freakishness, in one of which he secreted
himself under the table during a dinner-party at his father's house
and sewed the dresses of the ladies together. The result, when they
rose to leave the room, was disastrous in the extreme. But Professor
Cawker, as I need hardly remind my readers, was a genial and
noble-hearted man. I presented him on his marriage with a set of
garnet studs. Ever after when I dined at his house he wore them.
Nothing was ever said between us, but we both knew, and I shall never
forget.


III.

My old friend, Lemmens Porter, whose name I deeply regret not to
have read in the Honours List, reminds me of the painful story of
SWINBURNE, who, in a fit of temper, hurled two poached eggs at GEORGE
MEREDITH for speaking disrespectfully of VICTOR HUGO. The incident is
suppressed in Mr. GOSSE'S tactful life, but Mr. Porter had it direct
from MEREDITH, whose bath-chair he frequently pulled at Dorking.
SWINBURNE was, I regret to say, pagan in his views, but, unlike some
pagans, he was incapable of adhering to the golden mean. ARISTOTLE,
I feel certain, would never have condescended to the use of such a
missile, and it is beyond "imagination's widest stretch" to picture,
say, the late Dr. JOSEPH COOK, of Boston, the present Lord ABERDEEN,
or the Rev. Dr. Donald McGuffin acting in such a wild and tempestuous
manner.