which was one of the first attempts to give a poetical rendering in our language of Goethe’s masterpiece, had won him some literary reputation, and his rhymed translation of “Hernani” was a performance calculated to add to it considerably.  He was a very accomplished and charming person; good and amiable, clever, cultivated, and full of fine literary and artistic taste.  He was singularly modest and shy, with a gentle diffidence of manner and sweet, melancholy expression in his handsome face that did no justice to a keen perception of humor and relish of fun, which nobody who did not know him intimately would have suspected him of.

Of Lady Ellesmere I have already said that she was a sort of idol of mine in my girlhood, when first I knew her, and to the end of her life continued to be an object of my affectionate admiration.  She was excellently conscientious, true, and upright; of a direct and simple integrity of mind and character which her intercourse with the great world to which she belonged never impaired, and which made her singular and unpopular in the artificial society of English high life.  Her appearance always seemed to me strikingly indicative of her mind and character.  The nobly delicate and classical outline of her face, her pure, transparent complexion, and her clear, fearless eyes were all outward and visible expressions of her peculiar qualities.  Her beautifully shaped head and fine profile always reminded me of the Pallas Athene on some antique gem, and the riding cap with the visor, which she first made fashionable, increased the classical resemblance.  She was curiously wanting in imagination, and I never heard anything more comically literal than her description of her own utter destitution of poetical taste.  After challenging in vain her admiration for the great poets of our language, I quoted to her, not without misgiving, some charmingly graceful and tender lines, addressed to herself by her husband, and asked her if she did not like those:  “Oh yes,” replied she, “I think they are very nice, but you know I think they would be just as nice if they were not verses; and whenever I hear any poetry that I like at all, I always think how much better I should like it if it was prose;” an explanation of her taste that irresistibly reminded me of the delightful Frenchman’s sentiment about spinach:  “Je n’aime pas les epinards, et je suis si content que je ne les aime pas! parce que si je les aimais, j’en mangerais beaucoup, et je ne peux pas les souffrir.”

My intercourse with Lady Ellesmere, which had been a good deal interrupted during the years I passed out of England, was renewed the year before her death, when I visited her at Hatchford, where she was residing in her widowhood, and where I promised her when I left her I would return and stay with her again, but was never fortunate enough to do so, her death occurring not long afterward.