312
��NOTES BY THE WAY.
��through which " the noble face of the poet could be seen." I was one day talking with Mr. Lapham, in the office of The Examiner in Wellington Street. I was just in front of the counter, and he told me that Byron and Leigh Hunt had often come in to see him and stand just where I was standing.
��DUKE OF ARGYLE.
" I expected great things of The Athenceum review of the Duke 1906, June 23. f Argyle, which is fairly and impartially written, but does not Dnke of tempt me to read his autobiography. He was a clever and dis- Argyle. tinguished man, good in many ways, and an honourable, inde- fatigable worker, but totally devoid of genius. I wonder whether the book records the admirable ' settler ' with which Lord Derby, the ' Rupert of Debate ' of St. Stephen's, silenced him by his definition of him as the little wife of the big blacksmith, whom she continually attacked : ' It amuses her, and it don't hurt me.' "
��1907, May 29. Lytton.
Mrs. Oliphant.
��Her life of Edward Irving.
��Her memoir
of Lawrence
Oliphant.
��MRS. OLIPHANT.
" I am glad to see there is a fitting tribute of eulogy and praise to Lytton in the Quarterly (see ' N. & Q.,' p. 420). I like this notice very dearly .... Like yourself, I think Mrs. Oliphant's memoir of Irving is her most valuable work. She and Thomas Carlyle did much to preserve his memory unstained. In my father's house I used to see all the pictures, popular caricature portraits, there were of Edward Irving, and with that wonderful eye-memory of mine I retain a vivid impression of them all. The treatment of Irving by his ungrateful flock in London was infamous enough. I have always thought that the base conduct of the Annan presbytery, which later took on itself the legal privilege of deposing him from the ministry, unresistedly, was about the vilest and most hateful blunder in the lot. I am glad to know that dear Holyoake [this was in reference to my having given Holyoake a copy of Mrs. Oliphant's life of Irving], as you and I regard him, sincerely, thought so highly of Mrs. Oliphant's book.
" Her earliest memoir of Laurence Oliphant pleased me mightily; it must have been in dear Blackwood's Magazine ; but her two volumes of memoir that I purchased afterwards were quite un- satisfactory .... She trifled half-heartedly with them, as indeed she habitually did with her incessant writings, as though she had habituated herself on paltry taskwork for the moment's present pay till she had lost the comprehension of comparative value and
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