My own friendship with him began at my first meeting him, and this was long ago. Being at that time a less-known man of letters than I am now, supposing that to be possible, I was astonished one day when my friend Edmund Gosse told me that his friend Leicester Warren had expressed a wish to meet me on account of certain things of mine which he had read in _The Examiner_ and _The Athenæum_. I accepted with alacrity Mr. Gosse’s invitation to one of those charming _salons_ of his on the banks of Westbournia’s Grand Canal which have become historic. I was surprised to find Warren, who was then scarcely above forty, looking so old, not to say so old-fashioned. At that time he did not wear the moustache and beard which afterwards lent a picturesqueness to his face. There was a kind of rural appearance about him which had for me a charm of its own; it suited so well with his gentle ways, I thought. This being the impression he made upon me, it may be imagined how delighted I was shortly afterwards to see him come to the door of Ivy Lodge, Putney, where I was then living alone. Nor was I less surprised than delighted to see him. On realizing at Gosse’s _salon_ that my new acquaintance was a botanist, I had fraternized with him on this point, and had described to him an extremely rare and lovely little tree growing in the centre of my garden, which some unknown lover of trees had imported. I had given Warren a kind of general invitation to come some day and see it. So early a call as this I had not hoped to get. Perhaps I thought so reclusive a man as he even then appeared would never come at all. After having duly admired the tree he turned to the Rossetti crayons on the walls of the rooms; but although he talked much about ‘The Spirit of the Rainbow’ and the design from the same beautiful model which William Sharp has christened ‘Forced Music,’ the loveliness of which attracted him not a little, I perceived that he had something else that he wanted to talk about, and allowed him to lead the conversation up to it. To my surprise I found that, so far from having perceived how much he had interested me, he had imagined that my attitude towards him was constrained, and had explained it to his own discomfort after the following fashion: “Watts has an intimate friend of whose poetry I am a deep admirer—so deep indeed that some people, and not without reason, have said that my own poetry is unduly influenced by it. But an article by me in _The Fortnightly_ goes out of its way to dub as a ‘minor poet’ the very writer to whose influence I have succumbed. It is the incongruity between my dubbing my idol a ‘minor poet’ and my real and most obvious admiration of his work that makes Watts, in spite of an external civility, feel unfriendly towards me. Yet there is no real incongruity, for it was the editor, G. H. Lewes, who, after my proof had been returned for press, interpolated the objectionable words about the minor poet.”