Wordsworth put her hand upon his arm,
saying,--"Mr. Wordsworth is never interrupted." Again, during the same
interview, some one had said that the next Waverley novel was to be "Rob
Roy"; when Mr. Wordsworth took down his volume of Ballads, and read
to the company "Rob Roy's Grave,"--then, returning it to the shelf,
observed, "I do not know what more Mr. Scott can have to say upon the
subject." When Leigh Hunt had his first interview with Wordsworth, the
latter lectured to him--finely, indeed--upon his own writings; and
repeated the entire sonnet,
"Great men have been among us,"--
which Hunt said he did "in a grand and earnest tone." Some one in a
company quoting the passage from "Henry V.,"--
"So work the honey-bees,"
and each "picking out his pet plum" from that perfect piece of natural
history, Wordsworth objected to the line,
"The singing masons building roofs of gold,"
because, he said, of the unpleasant repetition of the "_ing_" in it!
Where were his ears and judgment on that occasion? But I have more
than once heard it said that Wordsworth had not a genuine love of
Shakspeare,--that, when he could, he always accompanied a "_pro_" with
his "_con_," and, Atticus-like, would "just hint a fault and hesitate
dislike.
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