“I saw Tennyson, when I was in London, several times. He is decidedly the first of our living poets, and I hope will live to give the world still better things. You will be pleased to hear that he expressed in the strongest terms his gratitude to my writings. To this I was far from indifferent, though persuaded that he is not much in sympathy with what I should myself most value in my attempts--viz., the spirituality with which I have endeavoured to invest the material universe, and the moral relations under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary appearances.” Hartley Coleridge-- He spoke of with affection. “There is a single line,” he added, “in one of his father’s poems, which I consider explains the after life of the son. He is speaking of his own confinement in London, and then says,-- ‘But thou, my child, shalt wander like a breeze.’ “He thought highly also of some of Hartley’s sonnets. Southey-- He said had outlived his faculties. His mind he thought had been wrecked by long watching by the sick bed of his wife, who had lingered for years in a very distressing state. Coleridge-- He said the liveliest and truest image he could give of Coleridge’s talk was that of “a mystic river, the sound or sight of whose course you caught at intervals, which was sometimes concealed by forests, sometimes lost in sand, and then came flashing out broad and distinct; then again took a turn which your eye could not follow, yet you knew and felt that it was the same river....[M] Coleridge had been spoilt as a poet by going to Germany. The bent of his mind, at all times very much inclined to metaphysical theology, had there been fixed in that direction.” Lord Byron-- “Has spoken severely of my compositions. However faulty they may be, I do not think I ever could have prevailed with myself to print such lines as he has done, for instance-- ‘I stood at Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand.’ “Some person ought to write a critical review analising Lord Byron’s language, in order to guard others against imitating him in these respects.” Emerson and Carlyle-- “Do you know Miss Peabody of Boston? She has just sent me, with the highest eulogy, certain essays of Mr. Emerson. Our---- and he appear to be what the French called _esprits forts_, though the French idols showed their spirit after a somewhat different fashion. Our two present _Philosophes_, who have taken a language which they suppose to be English, for their vehicle, are, verily, _par nobile fratrum_, and it is a pity that the weakness of our age has not left them exclusively to this appropriate reward--mutual admiration. Where is the thing which now passes for philosophy at Boston to stop?”