This, then, is my answer to the unkindly remarks against me in print of one who has shown manifestly a flash of genius in "The Scarlet Letter;" but, so far as I know, it was well-nigh a solitary one.
One further curious illustration of an uncongenial guest is this: Alexander Smith wrote a "Life Drama," full of sparkling poetic gems, which at once made him popular, apparently with justice enough.

I asked him down to Albury, made much of him, praised warmly sundry _morceaux_ of his (which I had marked in my copy), and to my astonishment received the brusque reply, "O, you like those, do you?
I shall alter them in next edition:" as I found afterwards he did.

He was a common-looking man, with a rough manner, and a squint.

As he seemed upset,--though why I could not guess,--I tried in other ways to please him; as, by a ramble in the woods and a drive in the waggonette: but all would not do,--his day came to an end as gloomily as it began.

Long after, I stumbled upon the reason.