“B.W.  PROCTER.”

Procter was an ardent student of the works of our older English dramatists, and he had a special fondness for such writers as Decker, Marlowe, Heywood, Webster, and Fletcher.  Many of his own dramatic scenes are modelled on that passionate and romantic school.  He had great relish for a good modern novel, too; and I recall the titles of several which he recommended warmly for my perusal and republication in America.  When I first came to know him, the duties of his office as a Commissioner obliged him to travel about the kingdom, sometimes on long journeys, and he told me his pocket companion was a cheap reprint of Emerson’s “Essays,” which he found such agreeable reading that he never left home without it.  Longfellow’s “Hyperion” was another of his favorite books during the years he was on duty.

Among the last agreeable visits I made to the old poet was one with reference to a proposition of his own to omit several songs and other short poems from a new issue of his works then in press.  I stoutly opposed the ignoring of certain old favorites of mine, and the poet’s wife joined with me in deciding against the author in his proposal to cast aside so many beautiful songs,—­songs as well worth saving as any in the volume.  Procter argued that, being past seventy, he had now reached to years of discretion, and that his judgment ought to be followed without a murmur.  I held out firm to the end of our discussion, and we settled the matter with this compromise:  he was to expunge whatever he chose from the English edition, but I was to have my own way with the American one.  So to this day the American reprint is the only complete collection of Barry Cornwall’s earliest pieces, for I held on to all the old lyrics, without discarding a single line.

The poet’s figure was short and full, and his voice had a low, veiled tone habitually in it, which made it sometimes difficult to hear distinctly what he was saying.  When in conversation, he liked to be very near his listener, and thus stand, as it were, on confidential ground with him.  His turn of thought was cheerful among his friends, and he proceeded readily into a vein of wit and nimble expression.  Verbal felicity seemed natural to him, and his epithets, evidently unprepared, were always perfect.  He disliked cant and hard ways of judging character.  He praised easily.  He had no wish to stand in anybody’s shoes but his own, and he said, “There is no literary vice of a darker shade than envy.”  Talleyrand’s recipe for perfect happiness was the opposite to his.  He impressed every one who came near him as a born gentleman, chivalrous and generous in a marked degree, and it was the habit of those who knew him to have an affection for him.  Altering a line of Pope, this counsel might have been safely tendered to all the authors of his day,—­

    “Disdain whatever Procter’s mind disdains.”