I find that in my Journal I wrote as regards this walk: "I wish I could remember more. He was wholly _facilis_, and I never felt less afraid of him or more reverent." Perhaps I should add that during the walk he told me an extraordinary number of ghost stories--a man appearing to several people, and then vanishing before their eyes. After dinner that evening we went to his _sanctum_ to hear him read the last Act of the "Promise of May." "Well, isn't that tragic?" he naïvely asked at one point, I think where Eva falls down dead. Next morning, I had to leave quite early for London. He just appeared at the top of the stairs, and offered to come down to say good-bye, but I would not let him. "I can remember little more of this delightful visit," so I wrote at the time. "He was full, as usual, of the public lies, and the necessity of England being strong at sea." I did not see him again till after my second marriage, which took place on August 9, 1888. We paid a flying visit to Lambert's Hotel, Freshwater, in April 1889. Of this I have made only the scantiest record. Something led us to speak of the famous line in the chorus of the _Agamemnon_: [Greek: ommatôn en achêniais.] "So modern," he remarked. He also spoke of the pathos of Euripides, and of the grandeur of the "Passing of Oedipus" in the _Oedipus Coloneus_, and _Theseus_ [Greek: cheir' antechonta kratos.] He referred again to lack of sympathy in his time between dons and undergraduates. This seemed to be a memory often present to his mind. Our next visit was in March 1890, when, with my wife's sister, we stayed at Lambert's Hotel. On Friday, March 28, we went to tea at Farringford, and found him in his little sun-trap of a summer-house, the evening sun playing full upon us, and bringing into perfect beauty the green lawn, the spreading trees, and the clumps of daffodils. He began by speaking of himself as depressed, but soon smiled away all such symptoms, and made us laugh with a story of the Duke of Wellington, when some prosy personage addressed him with a flattering compliment. He always seemed to enjoy anecdotes of the Great Duke. He was wearing a red cap which, in the sunlight, became him well; but he said playfully that Lady Tennyson disliked it as too suggestive of a "bonnet rouge." Something, I forget what, led to a reference to the well-known verse: Birds in the high Hall-garden When twilight was falling, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, They were crying and calling. He once asked a rather gushing lady what sort of birds she supposed these to be. "Nightingales," was the rather sentimental answer. "Who ever heard a nightingale say 'Maud'?" was the somewhat stern reply. "They were rooks of course."