No!  I was not at all disappointed in Wordsworth, although perhaps I should not have singled him from the multitude as a great man.  There is a reserve even in his countenance, which does not lighten as Landor’s does, whom I saw the same evening.  His eyes have more meekness than brilliancy; and in his slow even articulation there is rather the solemnity and calmness of truth itself, than the animation and energy of those who seek for it.  As to my being quite at my ease when I spoke to him, why how could you ask such a question?  I trembled both in my soul and body.  But he was very kind, and sate near me and talked to me as long as he was in the room—­and recited a translation by Cary of a sonnet of Dante’s—­and altogether, it was quite a dream!  Landor too—­Walter Savage Landor ... in whose hands the ashes of antiquity burn again—­gave me two Greek epigrams he had lately written ... and talked brilliantly and prominently until Bro (he and I went together) abused him for ambitious singularity and affectation.  But it was very interesting.  And dear Miss Mitford too! and Mr. Raymond, a great Hebraist and the ancient author of ’A Cure for a Heartache!’ I never walked in the skies before; and perhaps never shall again, when so many stars are out!  I shall at least see dear Miss Mitford, who wrote to me not long ago to say that she would soon be in London with ‘Otto,’ her new tragedy, which was written at Mr. Forrest’s own request, he in the most flattering manner having applied to her a stranger, as the authoress of ‘Rienzi,’ for a dramatic work worthy of his acting—­after rejecting many plays offered to him, and among them Mr. Knowles’s....  She says that her play will be quite opposed, in its execution, to ‘Ion,’ as unlike it ’as a ruined castle overhanging the Rhine, to a Grecian temple.’  And I do not doubt that it will be full of ability; although my own opinion is that she stands higher as the authoress of ‘Our Village’ than of ‘Rienzi,’ and writes prose better than poetry, and transcends rather in Dutch minuteness and high finishing, than in Italian ideality and passion.  I think besides that Mr. Forrest’s rejection of any play of Sheridan Knowles must refer rather to its unfitness for the development of his own personal talent, than to its abstract demerit, whatever Transatlantic tastes he may bring with him.  The published title of the last play is ‘The Daughter,’ not ‘The Wreckers,’ although I believe it was acted as the last.  I am very anxious to read ‘Otto,’ not to see it.  I am not going to see it, notwithstanding an offered temptation to sit in the authoress’s own box.  With regard to ‘Ion,’ I think it is a beautiful work, but beautiful rather morally than intellectually.  Is this right or not?  Its moral tone is very noble, and sends a grand and touching harmony into the midst of the full discord of this utilitarian age.  As dramatic poetry, it seems to me to want, not beauty, but power, passion, and condensation.  This is my doxy about ‘Ion.’  Its author[32] made me very proud by sending it to me, although we do not know him personally.  I have heard that he is a most amiable man (who else could have written ’Ion’?), but that he was a little elevated by his popularity last year!...