well'; and he points out that once we allow the intrusion of
anachronisms, it becomes difficult to say where the line is to be
drawn. In literature, again, like Lord Beaconsfield on a famous
occasion, he was 'on the side of the angels.' He was one of the
first to admire Keats and Shelley--'the tremulously-sensitive and
poetical Shelley,' as he calls him. His admiration for Wordsworth
was sincere and profound. He thoroughly appreciated William Blake.
One of the best copies of the 'Songs of Innocence and Experience'
that is now in existence was wrought specially for him. He loved
Alain Chartier, and Ronsard, and the Elizabethan dramatists, and
Chaucer and Chapman, and Petrarch. And to him all the arts were
one. 'Our critics,' he remarks with much wisdom, 'seem hardly
aware of the identity of the primal seeds of poetry and painting,
nor that any true advancement in the serious study of one art co-
generates a proportionate perfection in the other'; and he says
elsewhere that if a man who does not admire Michael Angelo talks of
his love for Milton, he is deceiving either himself or his
listeners. To his fellow-contributors in the London Magazine he
was always most generous, and praises Barry Cornwall, Allan
Cunningham, Hazlitt, Elton, and Leigh Hunt without anything of the
malice of a friend. Some of his sketches of Charles Lamb are
admirable in their way, and, with the art of the true comedian,
borrow their style from their subject:-


What can I say of thee more than all know? that thou hadst the
gaiety of a boy with the knowledge of a man: as gentle a heart as
ever sent tears to the eyes.

How wittily would he mistake your meaning, and put in a conceit