Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/95

 measures to improve or consolidate my intimacy. A busy life might have been the cause, but a more cogent one will probably be found in an entry in my diary somewhat later:—

"I used to find Leigh Hunt's literary criticism just and sympathetic, and his literary gossip as pleasant and wholesome as that dainty can ever be made, but I fell in of late with his 'Lord Byron and his Contemporaries,' which acted like a douche bath of unclean water on my enthusiasm. The book is stuffed and larded with ungenerous criticism of sayings and doings of the poet while Hunt was practically his guest, and reported remonstrances from H. to B. which must have been exasperating. Byron was arrogant and selfish, I daresay, but Hunt, on his own showing, would have provoked a saint. There are some extracts from Hazlitt in the book of solid sense and sparkling style, which run through the text like a ledge of granite shining with mica through an Irish bog."

On my next visit to London I had the good fortune to make acquaintance with a man of genius and his gifted wife, which ripened into a steadfast friendship, only ending with their lives. Frederick Lucas proposed to introduce me to Thomas Carlyle, and I gladly acquiesced. How much I owed to Thomas Carlyle's counsel and instruction, and to his wife's gracious and affectionate offices, I have endeavoured to record elsewhere. We agreed in few opinions except au fond in the duty of living for ends which are not selfish or sordid; but his talk was as stimulating as the morning breezes in an Alpine valley. I must not repeat here correspondence or conversations which I have already published, but I cannot refrain from printing the first letter he sent me a few weeks after our acquaintance began:—

", May 12, 1845.

",—I am happy to hear that there is at last a prospect of seeing your book, which I have been in expectation of since the night you were here. Certainly I will look into it; my distinct persuasion is that you must mean something by it a—very considerable distinction for a book or man in these days.