Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/85

Rh absence of his friend by suspending it over the mantelpiece in the place of an oval print. Before Hayley left the house its owner had returned and the poet had the satisfaction of seeing and hearing his friend's delight over his new acquisition. Warner was "a good looking man" but rather short in person.

Two characteristic letters from him to George Cumberland, poet and artist are in the Additional MS. No. 36498 at the British Museum. That dilettante had sent him a copy of his tale entitled "Lewina, the Maid of Snowdon" which he had published with his etchings and in the same volume with "a poem on the landscapes of Great Britain" in 1793. They could not have been without favour in the eyes of the public for the publisher paid no less than £56 for the profits of the sale, and offered to buy the copyright for £50 more. Cumberland declined this flattering offer, as he was dissatisfied with his productions, and resolved never to republish them. Warner, however, administered to him a strong dose of flattery on the merits of "Lewina." He had never seen "in so small a compass a happier mixture"—at this point his fondness for drollery broke in with the parenthesis "not a nappier mixture for that would make one sleep instead of weep"— "of the Beautiful, Philosophical and Pathetic." Cumberland at this time had never been outside the united kingdom, but Warner put forward the pleasing surmise that the Glen had been drawn "from the enchanting one near Basle called Munster Dale, exalting its rivulet to a foaming flood." These stimulants were effective. Cumberland acknowledges in his memorandum prefixed to the presentation copy of "Lewina" to the rev. John Eagles which is now at the British Museum, that through Warner's persuasion it was included, after correction, in the second volume of his collection of Original Tales. This was not the only piece by Cumberland that Warner took some pleasure in. He