Both Elwin and his friend had that inflexibility of principle in criticism and literary utterance which they adhered to as though it were a matter of high morals. This feeling contrasts with the easy adaptability of our day, when the critic so often has to shape his views according to interested aims. He indeed will hold in his views, but may not deem it necessary to produce them. I could recall instances in both men of this sternness of opinion. Forster knew no compromise in such matters; though I fancy in the case of people of title, for whom, as already mentioned, he had a weakness, or of pretty women, he may have occasionally given way. I remember when Elwin was writing his fine estimate of his deceased friend, Mrs. Forster in deep distress came to tell me that he insisted on describing her husband as "the son of a butcher." In vain had she entreated him to leave this matter aside. Even granting its correctness, what need or compulsion to mention it? It was infinitely painful to her. But it was not true: Forster's father was a large "grazier" or dealer in cattle. Elwin, however, was inflexible: some Newcastle alderman had hunted up entries in old books, and he thought the evidence convincing.
Another incident connected with the memory of her much-loved husband, that gave this amiable woman much poignant distress, was a statement made by Mr. Furnival, the Shakesperian, that Browning had been employed by Forster to write the account of Strafford, in the collection of Lives. He had been told this by Browning himself. Nevertheless, she set all her friends to work; had papers, letters, etc., ransacked for evidence, but with poor result. The probability was that Forster would have disdained such aid; on the other hand, the Poet had written a tragedy on the subject, and was, therefore, capable of dealing with it. Letters of vindication were sent to the papers, but no one was much interested in the point one way or the other; save, of course, the good Mrs. Forster, to whom it was vital. I am afraid, however, there was truth in the statement; for it is completely supported by a stray passage in one of the Poet's letters to his future wife, recently published.
Forster, I fancy, must have often looked wistfully back to the old Lincoln's Inn days, when he sat in his large Tulkinghorn room, with the Roman's finger pointing down to his head. I often grieve that I did not see this Roman, as I might have done, before he was erased; for Forster was living there when I first knew him. On his marriage he moved to that snug house in Montague Square, where we had often cosy dinners. He was driven from it, he used to say, by the piano-practising on each side of him, which became "in-_tol_-erable"; but I fancy the modest house was scarcely commensurate with his ambitions. It was somewhat old-fashioned too. And yet in his grand palatial mansion at Kensington I doubt if he was as jocund or as irrepressible as then. I am certain the burden of an ambitious life told upon his health and spirits.