ATJTIIOKS. 



We laughed at him. I quoted his 

 own beautiful address to the stock- 

 dove. He said, once in a wood 

 Mrs. "Wordsworth and a lady were 

 walking, when the stock-dove was 

 cooing. A fanner's wife coming 

 by said to herself, 'O, I do like 

 stock -doves.' Mrs. Wordsworth, 



in all her enthusiasm for Words- 

 worth's poetry, took the old woman 

 to her heart. 'But,' continued the 

 old woman, 'some like them in a 



Eie ; for my part, there's nothing 

 ke 'em stewed in onions.' ' (Hay- 

 don's Diary.) 



HONOURS AND EEWAEDS. 



LITERARY RESIDENCES. 



Men of genius have usually been 

 condemned to compose their finest 

 works, which are usually their ear- 

 liest, under the roof of a garret ; 

 and few literary characters have 

 lived, like Pliny and Voltaire, in a 

 villa or chateau of their own. It 

 has not therefore often happened, 

 that a man of genius could raise lo- 

 cal emotions by his own intellectual 

 suggestions. Ariosto, who built a 

 palace in his verse, lodged himself 

 in a small house, and found that 

 stanzas and stones were not put to- 

 gether at the same rate : old Mon- 

 taigne has left a description of his 

 library "over the entrance of my 

 house where I view my court-yards 

 and garden, and at once survey all 

 the operations of my family." A 

 literary friend, whom a hint of mine 

 had induced to visit the old tower 

 in the garden of Buffon, where that 

 sage retired every morning to com- 

 pose, passed so long a time -in that 

 lonely apartment, as to have raised 

 some solicitude among the honest 

 folks of Montbar, who, having seen 

 "the Englishman" enter, but not re- 

 turn, during a heavy thunder-storm 

 which had occurred in the interval, 

 informed the good mayor, who came 

 in due form to notify the ambiguous 

 state of the stranger. My friend is, 

 as is well known, a genius of that 

 cast who could pass two hours in 

 the Tower of Buffon, without being 

 aware that he had been all that time 

 occupied by suggestions of ideas and 

 reveries, which such a locality may 

 excite in some minds. He was also 



busied by his hand ; for he has fa- 

 voured me with two drawings of the 

 interior and the exterior of this old 

 tower in the garden; the nakedness 

 within can only be compared to the 

 solitude without. Such was the 

 studying room of Bufion, where his 

 eye, resting on no object, never in- 

 terrupted the unity of his medita- 

 tions on nature. Pope, who had 

 far more enthusiasm in his poetical 

 disposition than is generally under- 

 stood, was extremely susceptible of 

 those literary associations with lo- 

 calities: one of the volumes of his 

 Homer was begun and finished in 

 an old tower over the chapel at 

 Stanton Harcourt ; and he has per- 

 petuated the event, if not conse- 

 crated the place, by scratching with 

 a diamond on a pane of stained 

 glass this inscription : 



In tJie year 1718, 



Alexander Pope 



Finished HERE 



The fifth volume of Homer. 



It was the same feeling which in- 

 duced him one day, when taking 

 his usual walk with Harte in the 

 Haymarket, to desire Harte to en- 

 ter a little shop, where going up 

 three pair of stairs into a small room, 

 Pope said, "In this garret Addison 

 wrote his Campaign!" Nothing 

 less than a strong feeling impelled 

 the poet to ascend this garret it 

 was a consecrated spot to his eye ; 

 and certainly a curious instance of 

 the power of genius contrasted with 

 its miserable locality! Addison, 

 whose mind had fought through "a 

 campaign" in a garret, could he 



