Page:Diary, reminiscences, and correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Volume 1.djvu/19



Rh "not to be less than a sum named"—always a handsome amount. With a book-gift, he would sometimes send a long and valuable letter about the best way to read it. In Rome, on the birthday of Pepina, Miss Mackenzie's adopted child, he put into her hands a present of money, with a kind letter of advice, which he hoped would be valuable to her in after life. There was often peculiar delicacy in his acts of generosity. In one of his tours, he found his old friend Charlotte Serviere somewhat narrowed in her circumstances, and, calling at Frankfort on his way back, he begged her to do him the favour of relieving him of a part of the too large balance which his tour had left in his hands, and to excuse a pecuniary gift from an old friend. He would not let her express the gratitude she felt; but on leaving the house, on a subsequent visit, he could not prevent the old servant from seizing him by the hand, and saying, "I thank you for the great joy you have given to the Fräulein." Some who are now thriving in fortune, and holding a prominent place in the literary world, will remember the little "sealed notes," containing a valuable enclosure, for which he would fain have it believed that a volume or two of the author's works, or a ticket to a course of lectures, was ample return. Nor was his generosity by any means confined to pecuniary gifts, and personal exertions.

Not a few of his best anecdotes have got, prematurely, into print. This was inevitable with a good talker. And he would not have avoided it, if he could, by putting a restraint on the sociability of his nature, though he did like to have his anecdotes told as they ought to be. Not