“I do not know a man who better reads
    Or weighs the great thoughts of the book I send,—­
    Better than he whom I have called my friend
    For twenty years and upwards.  He who feeds
    Upon Shakesperian pastures never needs
    The humbler food which springs from plains below;
    Yet may he love the little flowers that blow,
    And him excuse who for their beauty pleads.

    “Take then my Shakespeare to some sylvan nook;
    And pray thee, in the name of Days of old,
    Good-will and friendship, never bought or sold,
    Give me assurance thou wilt always look
    With kindness still on Spirits of humbler mould;
    Kept firm by resting on that wondrous book,
    Wherein the Dream of Life is all unrolled.”

Forster’s library was filled with treasures, and he brought to the dinner-table, the day I was first with him, such rare and costly manuscripts and annotated volumes to show us, that one’s appetite for “made dishes” was quite taken away.  The excellent lady whom he afterward married was one of the guests, and among the gentlemen present I remember the brilliant author of “The Bachelor of the Albany,” a book that was then the Novel sensation in London.  Forster flew from one topic to another with admirable skill, and entertained us with anecdotes of Wellington and Rogers, gilding the time with capital imitations of his celebrated contemporaries in literature and on the stage.  A touch about Edmund Kean made us all start from our chairs and demand a mimetic repetition.  Forster must have been an excellent private actor, for he had power and skill quite exceptional in that way.  His force carried him along wherever he chose to go, and when he played “Kitely,” his ability must have been strikingly apparent.  After his marriage, and when he removed from Lincoln’s Inn to his fine residence at “Palace-Gate House,” he gave frequent readings, evincing remarkable natural and acquired talents.  For Dickens he had a love amounting to jealousy.  He never quite relished anybody else whom the great novelist had a fondness for, and I have heard droll stories touching this weakness.  For Professor Felton he had unbounded regard, which had grown up by correspondence and through report from Dickens.  He had never met Felton, and when the professor arrived in London, Dickens, with his love of fun, arranged a bit of cajolery, which was never quite forgotten, though wholly forgiven.  Knowing how highly Forster esteemed Felton, through his writings and his letters, Dickens resolved to take Felton at once to Forster’s house and introduce him as Professor Stowe, the port of both these gentlemen being pretty nearly equal.  The Stowes were then in England on their triumphant tour, and this made the attempt at deception an easy one.  So, Felton being in the secret, he and Dickens proceed to Forster’s house and are shown in.  Down comes Forster into the library, and is presented forthwith