George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[180] in order to look over his pictures, curiosities, etc.; and therefore nobody was invited to meet us but Miss Rogers and the Milmans. We had a three-hours' visit of it, from ten till past one, and saw certainly a great amount of curious things; not only the pictures, but drawings, autographs, little antiques; in short, whatever should belong to such a piece of bijouterie and virtu as Rogers himself is. Nor was agreeable conversation wanting, for he is full of anecdotes of his sixty or seventy years experience.

Among other things, he told me that Crabbe was nearly ruined by grief and vexation at the conduct of his wife for above seven years, at the end of which time she proved to be insane. . . . .

We dined with our friends the Edward Villiers', where we always enjoy ourselves, and where we always meet remarkable people. Today there was a Mr. Lewis,¹ evidently a very scholar-like person; Sir Edmund Head; Henry Taylor, the poet; and Mr. Stephen,² the real head of the Colonial Office, an uncommon man, son of Wilberforce's brother-in-law, the author of ‘War in Disguise.’ He is, I apprehend, very orthodox, and, what is better, very conscientious. He told me that his father wrote the ‘Frauds of Neutral Flags’—which so annoyed us Americans, and brought out Mr. Madison in replywholly from the relations of the subject to the slave-trade; his purpose being to resist all attempts on our part, or on the part of any other nation, to stop the English right—or practice—of search, because without that he was persuaded the slave-trade could never be practically and entirely abolished. The present state of things seems to justify his fears, if not his doctrines.

June 1.—. . . . After all, however, I found time to make a visit to Carlyle, and to hear one of his lectures. He is rather a small, spare, ugly Scotchman, with a strong accent, which I should think he takes no pains to mitigate. His manners are plain and simple, but not polished, and his conversation much of the same sort. He is now lecturing for subsistence, to about a hundred persons, who pay him, I believe, two guineas each . . . . . To-day he spoke—as I think he commonly does—without notes, and therefore as nearly extempore as a man can who prepares himself carefully, as it was plain he had done. His course is on Modern Literature, and his subject to-day was that of the eighteenth century; in which he contrasted Johnson and Voltaire very well, and gave a good character of Swift. He was impressive, I think, though such lecturing could not well be very