Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/276

 be praised I am not) I would find a career in extinguishing the fog by the aid of science, and with the help of some architect of genius, making London one of the handsomest cities of Europe. One cannot stir out of doors without seeing something that ought to be amended, something that ought to be suppressed, something that ought to be supplied.

A day or two later Hennessy called on me. He is a dapper, dandified little fellow with a frank, cordial smile. He told me if he had been ten years older, he would have been an active ally of mine in '48. His father bred him up as a vehement Nationalist, and he still only waited a fair opportunity to serve the good old cause. He urged me to return to the House of Commons, and pledged himself for one warm supporter. I asked him about his relations to John Dillon, for whom he professed respect and affection.

On Sunday I generally went to Chelsea, and after a pleasant gossip in the little sitting-room at the foot of the stairs with Madame, I sallied out with Carlyle and walked for several hours in Hyde Park or Battersea Park, talking as of old. I rarely could remain for the evening, as John Forster had provided a treat which I found irresistible. Robert Browning had promised to dine with him for some Sundays in succession, and Forster proposed that I should make a third. He knew that I had regarded Browning, since I first read "The Blot on the 'Scutcheon," in an ill-printed pamphlet, as the first poet of his age and country. I find in my diary a note of the first evening, which occupies as much space as I can afford in this place for these pleasant symposia:—

"Before Browning arrived, Forster said that in his opinion the poet was hopelessly misjudged by the bulk of his contemporaries. I suggested that that was what ordinarily happened to an original man, especially to an original poet. It was not so very long since Englishmen utterly disregarded Wordsworth; afterwards they were diverted by the shallow impudence of Jeffrey at his cost; and finally they acknowledged him as the greatest poet of his age. The same process was probably recurring with Robert Browning.

"I had the satisfaction of seeing Browning for the first He is middle-sized, slight, grey-bearded, with a small but well-shaped head. His personal utterance wants depth