It is with mingled feelings of pride, pleasure, and pain, that I revert to those old times, when the writers I had long known and admired in spirit were present to me in the flesh--when I had the delight of listening to their wit and wisdom from their own lips, of gazing on their faces, and grasping their right hands. Familiar figures rise before me, familiar voices ring in my ears, and alas! amongst them are shapes that I must never see, sounds that I can never hear, again. Before my departure from England, I was one of the few who saw the grave close over the remains of one whom to know as a friend was to love as a relation. Never did a better soul go to a better world! Never perhaps (giving the lie direct to the common imputation of envy, malice, and hatred, amongst the brotherhood), never did an author descend--to quote his favourite Sir T. Browne--into “the land of the mole and the pismire” so hung with golden opinions, and honoured and regretted with such sincere eulogies and elegies, by his contemporaries. To HIM, the first of these, my reminiscences, is eminently due, for I lost in him not only a dear and kind friend, but an invaluable critic; one whom, were such literary adoptions in modern use, I might well name, as Cotton called Walton, my “father.” To borrow the earnest language of old Jean Bertaut, as Englished by Mr. Cary-- “Thou, chiefly, noble spirit, for whose loss Just grief and mourning all our hearts engross, Who seeing me devoted to the Nine, Didst hope some fruitage from those buds of mine; Thou didst excite me after thee t’ascend The Muses’ sacred hill; nor only lend Example, but inspirit me to reach The far-off summit by thy friendly speech. * * * * * May gracious Heaven, O honour of our age! Make the conclusion answer thy presage, Nor let it only for vain fortune stand, _That I have seen thy visage--touch’d thy hand_!”