Lord Lynedale came to my cousin’s rooms next day—­George told me plainly that he made friends with those who would advance him when he was a clergyman—­and taking an interest in a self-educated author, bade me bring my poems to the Eagle and ask for Dean Winnstay.  Lord Lynedale was to marry Dean Winnstay’s niece.  When I arrived at the Eagle, the first person I saw was Lillian—­for so her father, the dean, called her—­the younger lady, my heroine of the Dulwich Gallery, looking more beautiful than ever.  I could have fallen down—­fool that I was!—­and worshipped—­ what?  I could not tell you, for I cannot tell even now.

The dean smiled recognition, bade me sit down, and disposed my papers on his knee.  I obeyed him, trembling, my eyes devouring my idol, forgetting why I had come, seeing nothing but her, listening for nothing but the opening of those lips.

“I think I may tell you at once that I am very much surprised and gratified with your poems,” said the old gentleman.

“How very fond of beautiful things you must be, Mr. Locke,” said Lillian, “to be able to describe so passionately the longing after them!”

I stammered out something about working-men having very few opportunities of indulging the taste for—­I forget what.

“Ah, yes!  I dare say it must be a very stupid life.  So little opportunity, as he says.  What a pity he is a tailor, papa!  Such an unimaginative employment!  How delightful it would be to send him to college and make him a clergyman!”

Fool that I was!  I fancied—­what did I not fancy?—­never seeing how that very “he” bespoke the indifference—­the gulf between us.  I was not a man, an equal, but a thing—­a subject, who was to be talked over and examined, and made into something like themselves, of their supreme and undeserved benevolence.

“Gently!  Gently, fair lady!” said the dean.  “We must not be as headlong as some people would kindly wish to be.  If this young man really has a proper desire to rise to a higher station, and I find him a fit object to be assisted in that praiseworthy ambition, why, I think he ought to go to some training college.  Now attend to me, sir!  Recollect, if it should be in our power to assist your prospects in life, you must give up, once and for all, the bitter tone against the higher classes which I am sorry to see in your MSS.  Next, I think of showing these MSS. to my publisher, to get opinion as to whether they are worth printing just now.  Not that it is necessary that you should be a poet.  Most active minds write poetry at a certain age.  I wrote a good deal, I recollect, myself.  But that is no reason for publishing.”

At this point Lillian fled the room, to my extreme disgust.  But still the old man prosed.

“I think, therefore, that you had better stay with your cousin for the next week.  I hear from Lord Lynedale that he is a very studious, moral, rising young man, and I only hope that you will follow his good example.  At the end of the week I shall return home, and then I shall be glad to see more of you at my house at D——.  Good-morning!”