He little knew that, when I was in my early 'teens and had the most absurdly exaggerated notions of my song-writing powers, I had had the presumption to ask my cousin, Mr. Stephen Spring Rice, if he would induce his old friend to send me a MS. poem to set. Happily, I only got a kindly but necessary rap over the knuckles for my impertinence; the request was consigned to the waste-paper basket and mercifully never reached Farringford. I tremble now to recall the incident, although I verily believe that if Mr. Spring Rice had been cruel enough to send my letter on, the smile which it must have provoked would in no wise have been a contemptuous one. I can imagine his saying then, what I have often heard him say in later days, "Maxima debetur pueris reverentia." I had seen so much of Aubrey de Vere all through my boyhood that I almost felt as if I knew Tennyson too, so vivid were his accounts of him, and his descriptions of his ways and surroundings. Joachim also, who all through the British part of his international career was in close touch with the Tennyson circle, used often to speak of him with the deep reverence and whole-hearted enthusiasm which he reserved for a very few. On the staircase at Farringford hangs Mrs. Cameron's early (and still unsurpassed) photograph of the great violinist. My host pointed at it one day as he passed upstairs: "That's Joachim. He's a fine fellow. Why did he cover up that fine jowl with a beard?"--quite forgetful of the possible retort that he had committed the same wickedness himself. On the comparatively rare occasions when he came up to London, and was surrounded by all the stars in the literary and political firmament, Joachim and his Stradivarius were as brilliant a centre of attraction as any of his guests. Joachim's setting of Merlin's song in "The Coming of Arthur" was an especial favourite of his, as both in atmosphere and in declamation it exactly fulfilled the intention of his verse. Joachim once told me that he always had great hankerings after setting "The Revenge," but that he repressed them because he felt that it could only be tackled in the true English spirit by a Britisher.