praiseworthy, and a creditable ambition worthy of a young man, and I would furnish you the means, did I not think your desire to see the world is not so great as my disinclination to have the world see you.’ I went,” said Halleck, “to see the world,—not to let the world see me.” (It must be remembered that Halleck visited Europe in 1823, before he was generally known as a writer.) Then he added, “If I went abroad now, I would have different ideas. If those great poets were living, I should like to see them all.”
When he heard that Browning, the poet, was married to Miss Elizabeth Barrett, he said, “Ah, I am glad of it—they will be able to understand each other.”
He told an anecdote of Tom Moore and a Yankee boatman, one day, in illustration of a poet’s fame:
Where’er beneath the sky of Heaven,
The birds of fame have flown.
It seems the author of the “Melodies,” during a visit to America, had hired a boatman to convey him across Lake Ontario, from Lewisburg to Toronto. When they reached the latter place, Moore pulled out his purse to pay the fare, when the boatman, laying his hand upon the poet’s wrist, said, “Not a cent from you, Tom Moore!” “Why,” said Moore, surprised, “how did you know my name?” “Oh!” said the boatman, “I read it on your trunk; and me, and my wife, and my children, all know your Melodies by heart, and we sing ’em too, and do you think I’d take a cent from you, Tom Moore?” “It was the first time in my life,” said Moore, “that I ever felt the fulness of
