and if you would run the gauntlet over London Bridge, take the first turning to the left, and then the first to the right, and, moreover, knock at my door, which is nearly opposite a meeting, you would do me a charity, which, as St. Paul saith, is the father of all the virtues.  At all events, let me hear from you soon:  I say, at all events, not excepting the gout in your fingers.”  I have little doubt that this letter (which has no other date than the day of the week, and no post-mark) preceded our first symposium; and a memorable night it was in my life’s career.

A copy, and a beautiful one, of the folio edition of Chapman’s Homer had been lent me.  It was the property of Mr. Alsager, the gentleman who for years had contributed no small share of celebrity to the great reputation of the “Times” newspaper, by the masterly manner in which he conducted the money-market department of that journal.  At the time when I was first introduced to Mr. Alsager, he was living opposite Horsemonger-Lane Prison; and upon Mr. Leigh Hunt’s being sentenced for the libel, his first day’s dinner was sent over by Mr. Alsager.  He was a man of the most studiously correct demeanor, with a highly cultivated taste and judgment in the fine arts and music.  He succeeded Hazlitt, (which was no insignificant honor,) and for some time contributed the critiques upon the theatres, but ended by being the reporter of the state of the money-market.  He had long been accustomed to have the first trial at his own house of the best-reputed new foreign instrumental music, which he used to import from Germany.

Well, then, we were put in possession of the Homer of Chapman, and to work we went, turning to some of the “famousest” passages, as we had scrappily known them in Pope’s version.  There was, for instance, that perfect scene of the conversation on Troy wall of the old Senators with Helen, who is pointing out to them the several Greek captains, with that wonderfully vivid portrait of an orator, in Ulysses, in the Third Book, beginning at the 237th line,—­

  “But when the prudent Ithacus did to his counsels rise”;

the helmet and shield of Diomed, in the opening of the Fifth Book; the prodigious description of Neptune’s passage in his chariot to the Achive ships, in the opening of the Thirteenth Book,—­

  “The woods, and all the great hills near,
  trembled beneath the weight
  Of his immortal moving feet.”

The last was the whole of the shipwreck of Ulysses in the Fifth Book of the “Odyssey.”  I think his expression of delight, during the reading of those dozen lines, was never surpassed:—­

“Then forth he came, his both knees faltering, both His strong hands hanging down, and all with froth His cheeks and nostrils flowing, voice and breath Spent to all use, and down he sunk to death. The sea had soaked his heart through; all his veins His toils had racked t’ a laboring woman’s pains.  Dead weary was he.”

On an after-occasion I showed him the couplet of Pope’s upon the same passage:—­