figure, he was a keen lover of the opera and theatre. He was always
the first to know when the opera season was to begin and to plan that
our two houses might take a box together. He was always ready to hear
"Lucia" or "Don Giovanni" and to make a festival time at the coming of
Salvini or Neilson. There is a tiny notelet among his letters, with a
newspaper paragraph neatly cut out and pasted across the top,
detailing the names of his party at a previous appearance at a
theatre, a kind of notoriety which he particularly shuddered at; but
in order to prove his determination in spite of everything, he writes
below:--

"Now for 'Pinafore,' and another paragraph! Saturday afternoon would
be a good time."

He easily caught the gayety of such occasions, and in the shadow of
the curtains in the box would join in the singing or the recitative of
the lovely Italian words with a true poet's delight.

The strange incidents of a life subject to the taskmaster Popularity
are endless. One day he wrote:--
"A stranger called here and asked if Shakespeare lived in this
neighborhood. I told him I knew no such person. Do you?"

Day by day he was besieged by every possible form of interruption
which the ingenuity of the human brain could devise; but his patience
and kindness, his determination to accept the homage offered him in
the spirit of the giver, whatever discomfort it might bring himself,
was continually surprising to those who observed him year by year. Mr.
Fields wrote: "In his modesty and benevolence I am reminded of what
Pope said of his friend Garth: 'He is the best of Christians without