again was the same man as before.

Richard Monckton Milnes, who was afterwards Lord Houghton, was greatly
attracted towards my father, who liked him; but circumstances
prevented their seeing much of each other. Milnes was then forty-five
years old; he was a Cambridge man, and intimate with Tennyson, Hallam,
and other men of literary mark, and he was himself a minor poet, and
warm in the cause of literature. During his parliamentary career, in
1837, he was instrumental in passing the copyright act. He had
travelled in Greece and Italy in his twenties; was fond of society,
and society of him. A more urbane and attractive English gentleman did
not exist; everything that a civilized man could care for was at his
disposal, and he made the most of his opportunities. His manners were
quiet and cordial, with a touch of romance and poetry mingling with
the man-of-the-world tone in his conversation, and he was quite an
emotional man. I have more than once seen tears in his eyes and heard
a sob in his voice when matters that touched his heart or imagination
were discussed. There was, indeed, a vein of sadness and pessimism in
Milnes, though only his intimates were aware of it; it was the
pessimism of a man who has too much leisure for intellectual analysis
and not enough actual work to do to keep him occupied. It lent a fine
flavor of irony to some of his conversation. He was liberal in
politics and liberal in his attitude towards life in general; but
there was not force enough in him, or, at any rate, not stimulus
enough, to lift him to distinction. Some of his poems, however,
betrayed a deep and radical vein of thought. He was of middle
height, well made, light built, with a large and well-formed head and
wavy, dark hair. His likeness to Longfellow was marked, though he was
hardly so handsome a man; but the type of head and face was the
same--the forehead and brain well developed, the lower parts of the