I have let the Full Moon pass because you had written to me so lately, and so kindly, about our lost Spedding, that I could not call on you too soon again. Of him I will say nothing except that his Death has made me recall very many passages in his Life in which I was partly concerned. In particular, staying at his Cumberland Home along with Tennyson in the May of 1835.... His Father and Mother were both alive--he a wise man, who mounted his Cob after Breakfast, and was at his Farm till Dinner at two--then away again till Tea: after which he sat reading by a shaded lamp: saying very little, but always courteous and quite content with any company his Son might bring to the house, so long as they let him go his way: which indeed he would have gone whether they let him or no. But he had seen enough of Poets not to like them or their Trade: Shelley for a time living among the Lakes: Coleridge at Southey's (whom perhaps he had a respect for--Southey, I mean); and Wordsworth, whom I do not think he valued. He was rather jealous of "Jem," who might have done available service in the world, he thought, giving himself up to such Dreamers; and sitting up with Tennyson conning over the "Morte d'Arthur," "Lord of Burleigh," and other things which helped to make up the two Volumes of 1842. So I always associate that Arthur Idyll with Basanthwaite Lake, under Skiddaw. Mrs. Spedding was a sensible, motherly Lady, with whom I used to play Chess of a Night. And there was an old Friend of hers, Miss Bristowe, who always reminded me of Miss La Creevy, if you know of such a Person in _Nickleby_. We will conclude with what his old friend, Sir Henry Taylor, wrote of him after his death: As he will not read what I write I may allow myself to say something more. He was always master of himself and of his emotions; but underlying a somewhat melancholy composure and aspect there were depths of tenderness known only to those who knew his whole nature and his inward life, and it is well for those by whom he is mourned if they can find what he has described in a letter to be his great consolation in all his experiences of the death of those he loved (experiences which had begun early and had not been few), "that the past is sacred and sanctified; nothing can happen hereafter to disturb or obliterate it; nor need the recollection have any bitterness if a man does not, out of a false and morbid sentiment, make it so for himself." And he adds: To me there are no companions more welcome, cordial, consolatory or cheerful than my dead friends. ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM [Illustration: ARTHUR HALLAM READING "WALTER SCOTT" ALOUD ON BOARD THE "LEEDS," BOUND FROM BORDEAUX TO DUBLIN, SEPT. 9, 1830.