Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 101.djvu/76

64 Mark, believer in the bilious "personal talk" of N. P. Willis and his sympathisers, how Thomas the Rhymer here recognises in the man what it was his fate to miss in the reviewer. Only because of the vulgar acceptation of the aforesaid personal strictures do we thus trench on what is a personal province. But one so often hears allusions rounded on what has been sketched by the Penciller by the Way, that it is but fair to point to testimony recently given, incidentally enough, by other popular writers, whose opinions happen to be on record, and may be taken for what they are worth : we will confine ourselves to two—John Sterling and B. R. Haydon—both men strikingly diverse in party and tendency from him they refer to. "I found him," says Sterling, describing an interview with Lockhart on the subject of S.'s Strafford, "as neat, clear, and cutting a brain as you would expect; but with an amount of knowledge, good-nature, and liberal anti-bigotry, that would surprise many. The tone of his children towards him seemed to me decisive of his real kindness." "L., when we became acquainted," says Haydon, "felt so strongly how little I deserved what had been said of me, that his whole life has since been a struggle to undo the evil he was at the time a party to. Hence ha visits to me in prison, his praise in the Quarterly, &c. …. This shows a good heart, and a fine heart L. has; but he is fond of mischief and fun, and does not think of the wreck he has made till he has seen the fragments." Very like Haydon, truly; but let that pass.

hands, ye gallant men!

O'er the long feuds, the hatreds of the past,

The waters of oblivion wisely cast;

England and France are love-knit sisters now,

Smiles on their lips, good-will on each smooth brow:

The victories both have won,

Since glory's race begun,

Shall rouse no memories up,

To poison Friendship's cup;

And nought again but pure and generous wine,

Shall in that ivy-mantled goblet shine,

The drinkers quaffing to the Island-Queen,

To whom old Ocean's stormy billows yield,

And Gaul, the bold of heart, the gay of mien,

The dauntless in the field.