. Literary friends and acquaintance : a personal retrospect of American authorship. when he went to see him in Frankfort; but I felt atonce this was a false start, for Lowell was such an im-passioned lover of Cambridge, which was truly hispatria, in the Italian sense, that it must have hurt be unknown to any one in it; he said, a little dryly,that he should not have thought I would have so muchdifficulty; but he added, forgivingly, that this was nothis own house, which he was out of for the time. Thenhe spoke to me of Heine, and when I showed my ardorfor him, he sought to temper it with
. Literary friends and acquaintance : a personal retrospect of American authorship. when he went to see him in Frankfort; but I felt atonce this was a false start, for Lowell was such an im-passioned lover of Cambridge, which was truly hispatria, in the Italian sense, that it must have hurt be unknown to any one in it; he said, a little dryly,that he should not have thought I would have so muchdifficulty; but he added, forgivingly, that this was nothis own house, which he was out of for the time. Thenhe spoke to me of Heine, and when I showed my ardorfor him, he sought to temper it with some judiciouscriticisms, and told me that he had kept the first poemI sent him, for the long time it had been unacknowl-edged, to make sure that it was not a translation. Heasked me about myself, and my name, and its Welshorigin, and seemed to find the vanity I had in thisharmless enough. When I said I had tried hard to be-lieve that I was at least the literary descendant of SirJames Howels, he corrected me gently with JamesHowel, and took down a volume of the Familiar Let- 26. -^ .^^ GIRLS IN EVANGELINE HATS AND KIRTLES TOSSING HAY MY FIRST VISIT TO NEW ENGLAND ters from the shelves behind him to prove me was always his habit, as I found afterwards:when he quoted anything from a book he liked to getit and read the passage over, as if he tasted a kind ofhoarded sweetness in the words. It visibly vexed himif they showed him in the least mistaken; but The love he bore to learning was at fault for this foible, and that other of setting people right ifhe thought them wrong. I could not assert myselfagainst his version of Howels name, for my edition ofhis letters was far away in Ohio, and I was obliged to0T\Ti that the name was spelt in several different waysin it. He perceived, no doubt, why I had chosen theform likest my own, with the title which the pleasantold turncoat ought to have had from the many mastershe served according to their many minds, but neverhad excep
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