It was a
_very little_ bump! My elbow just touched his, and I trembled. He took
off his hat, muttered, "I beg your pardon," and passed on, not
recognizing me, of course; but I had had my look into his eyes. They
were very quiet eyes, and didn't open wide.
I love Disraeli's novels--like his tie, brighter in color than any one
else's. It was "Venetia" which first made me see the real Lord Byron,
the real Lady Byron, too. In "Tancred" I recall a description of a
family of strolling players which seems to me more like the real thing
than anything else of the kind in fiction. It is strange that Dizzy's
novels should be neglected. Can any one with a pictorial sense fail to
be delighted by their pageantry? Disraeli was a heaven-born artist, who,
like so many of his race, on the stage, in music, and elsewhere, seems
to have had an unerring instinct for the things which the Gentile only
acquires by labor and training. The world he shows us in his novels is
big and swelling, but only to a hasty judgment is it hollow.
Tennyson was more to me than a magic-lantern shape, flitting across the
blank of my young experience, never to return. The first time I saw him
he was sitting at the table in his library, and Mrs.
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