"What a strange thing is life and man! Were I to present myself at the
door of the house where my daughter now is, the door would be shut in my
face--unless (as is not impossible) I knocked down the porter; and if I
had gone in that year (and perhaps now) to Drontheim (the furthest town in
Norway), or into Holstein, I should have been received with open arms into
the mansion of strangers and foreigners, attached to me by no tie but by
that of mind and rumour.
"As far as _fame_ goes, I have had my share: it has indeed been leavened
by other human contingencies, and this in a greater degree than has
occurred to most literary men of a decent rank of life; but, on the whole,
I take it that such equipoise is the condition of humanity."
"A young American, named Coolidge, called on me not many months ago. He
was intelligent, very handsome, and not more than twenty years old,
according to appearances; a little romantic, but that sits well upon youth,
and mighty fond of poesy, as may be suspected from his approaching me in
my cavern. He brought me a message from an old servant of my family (Joe
Murray), and told me that _he_ (Mr. Coolidge) had obtained a copy of my
bust from Thorwaldsen, at Rome, to send to America. I confess I was more
flattered by this young enthusiasm of a solitary Trans-Atlantic traveller,
than if they had decreed me a statue in the Paris Pantheon (I have seen
emperors and demagogues cast down from their pedestals even in my own time,
and Grattan's name razed from the street called after him in Dublin); I
say that I was more flattered by it, because it was _single, unpolitical_,
and was without motive or ostentation--the pure and warm feeling of a boy
for the poet he admired. It must have been expensive, though;--_I_ would
not pay the price of a Thorwaldsen bust for any human head and shoulders,
except Napoleon's, or my children's, or some '_absurd womankind's_,' as
Monkbarn's calls them--or my sister's. If asked _why_, then, I sate for my
own?--Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse, Esq.,
and for no one else. A _picture_ is a different matter;--every body sits
for their picture;--but a bust looks like putting up pretensions to
permanency, and smacks something of a hankering for public fame rather
than private remembrance.
"Whenever an American requests to see me (which is not unfrequently) I
comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom by
their firmness without excess; and, secondly, because these Trans-Atlantic
visits, 'few and-far between' make me feel as if talking with posterity
from the other side of the Styx. In a century or two, the new English and
Spanish Atlantides will be masters of the old countries, in all
probability, as Greece and Europe overcame their mother Asia in the older
or earlier ages, as they are called."