His friends urged him to tell them about it.  After some hesitation, he said:  ``Well, I will tell you.  I was standing some time ago at the entrance of Rydal Mount.  A man accosted me with the question:  `Pray, sir, have you seen my wife pass by?’ Whereupon I retorted, `Why, my good friend, I didn’t know till this moment that you had a wife.’ ‘’

Illustrative of Wordsworth’s vanity, it is told that when it was reported that the next Waverley novel was to be ``Rob Roy,’’ the poet took down his ``Ballads’’ and read to the company ``Rob Roy’s Grave.’’ Then he said gravely:  ``I do not know what more Mr. Scott can have to say on the subject.’’

Wordsworth and Dickens disliked each other cordially.  Having been asked his opinion of the young novelist, Wordsworth answered:  ``Why, I’m not much given to turn critic on people I meet; but, as you ask me, I will cordially avow that I thought him a very talkative young person—­but I dare say he may be very clever.  Mind, I don’t want to say a word against him, for I have never read a line he has written.’’

The same inquirer subsequently asked Dickens how he liked Wordsworth.

``Like him!’’ roared Dickens, ``not at all; he is a dreadful Old Ass!’’

XIX

OUR DEBT TO MONKISH MEN

Where one has the time and the money to devote to the collection of missals and illuminated books, the avocation must be a very delightful one.  I never look upon a missal or upon a bit of antique illumination that I do not invest that object with a certain poetic romance, and I picture to myself long lines of monkish men bending over their tasks, and applying themselves with pious enthusiasm thereto.  We should not flatter ourselves that the enjoyment of the delights of bibliomania was reserved to one time and generation; a greater than any of us lived many centuries ago, and went his bibliomaniacal way, gathering together treasures from every quarter, and diffusing every where a veneration and love for books.

Richard de Bury was the king, if not the father, of bibliomaniacs; his immortal work reveals to us that long before the invention of printing men were tormented and enraptured by those very same desires, envies, jealousies, greeds, enthusiasms, and passions which possess and control bibliomaniacs at the present time.  That vanity was sometimes the controlling passion with the early collectors is evidenced in a passage in Barclay’s satire, ``The Ship of Fools’’; there are the stanzas which apply so neatly to certain people I know that sometimes I actually suspect that Barclay’s prophetic eye must have had these nineteenth-century charlatans in view.

  But yet I have them in great reverence
      And honor, saving them from filth and ordure
  By often brushing and much diligence. 
      Full goodly bound in pleasant coverture
      Of damask, satin, or else of velvet pure,
  I keep them sure, fearing lest they should be lost,
  For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.