we returned home he questioned and pondered much upon Dickens himself.
Finally he said: "I am afraid he has too much talent for his genius;
it is a fearful locomotive to which he is bound, and he can never be
freed from it nor set at rest. You see him quite wrong evidently, and
would persuade me that he is a genial creature, full of sweetness and
amenities, and superior to his talents; but I fear he is harnessed to
them. He is too consummate an artist to have a thread of nature left.
He daunts me. I have not the key." When Mr. Fields came in he
repeated: "---- would persuade me that Dickens is a man easy to
communicate with, sympathetic and accessible to his friends; but her
eyes do not see clearly in this matter, I am sure!"

The tenor of his way was largely stayed by admiration and appreciation
of others, often far beyond their worth. He gilded his friends with
his own sunshine. He wrote to his publisher: "Give me leave to make
you acquainted with ----" (still unknown to fame), "who has written a
poem which he now thinks of publishing. It is, in my judgment, a
serious and original work of great and various merit, with high
intellectual power in accosting the questions of modern thought, full
of noble sentiment, and especially rich in fancy, and in sensibility
to natural beauty. I remember that while reading it I thought it a
welcome proof, and still more a prediction, of American culture. I
need not trouble you with any cavils I made on the manuscript I read,
as ---- assures me that he has lately revised and improved the
original draft. I hope you will like the poem as heartily as I did."

I find a record of one very warm day in Boston in July when, in spite
of the heat, Mr. Emerson came to dine with us:--

"He talked much of Forceythe Willson, whose genius he thought akin to