_T._ "I liked Hartley Coleridge, 'Massa' Hartley' as the rustics called him. He was a lovable little fellow. Once he said to me, 'Had I been Colonel Burns (the Poet's eldest son) I would have kicked Wordsworth for delivering that preachment.' On one occasion Hartley, who was very eccentric, was asked to dine with the family of a stiff Presbyterian clergyman residing in the Lake district. The guests, Trappist fashion, sat a long time in the drawing-room waiting for the announcement of dinner. Not a word was uttered, and Hartley was bored to extinction. At last he suddenly jumped up from the sofa, kissed the clergyman's wife, and rushed out of the house. He was wonderfully eloquent, and, I fancy, resembled his father in that respect." * * * * * _T._ "I doubt that fine poem 'Kubla Khan' having been written in sleep; I have often imagined new poems in my sleep, but I couldn't remember them in the morning. Your uncle's words: 'Tennyson has no sense of rhythm and scansion,' have been constantly quoted against me. The truth is that in my youth I used no hyphens in writing composite words, and a reader might fancy that from this omission I had no knowledge of the length and measure of words and expressions." * * * * * _T._ "Burns was a great genius, but dreadfully coarse sometimes. When he attempts to write in pure English, he breaks down utterly." He quoted many things of Burns's: "O my Luv's like a red, red rose," and "Gae fetch to me a pint o' wine," etc., with the greatest admiration, and "Mary Morison" and "Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," etc. "They have utterly ruined the lilt of the last," he said, "when they added words for the musical setting." * * * * * He was fond of talking about great pictures and fine sculpture. Birket Foster joined us one day, and Tennyson asked him to define the word "picturesque," and to say why tumble-down cottages in the Isle of Wight were such favourite subjects with painters. B. F. answered that it was the breaking of the straight line. We talked of Frederick Walker, and B. F. told us many stories of his wit and conscientiousness. "I mean to paint a picture," said he, "the key-note of which is to be onion-seed." * * * * * Primrose Day.--_T._ "All the floral displays for which we Isle of Wighters suffer are based on a mistaken version of the Queen's meaning, when she sent a wreath of primroses for Lord Beaconsfield's grave, inscribed with 'His favourite flower.' She meant Prince Albert's, not Lord Beaconsfield's partiality for the flower in question." * * * * *