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CAMBRIDGE   63

a tame monkey ! So the Count throve and prospered for a while. But a lady resident in the neighbourhood who had been connected in her youth with one of the German Courts, and who studied the Almanach de Gotha and the like, insisted that the Count's claims to the title were totally unfounded. So a small warfare raged. In the meantime the Count won the affections of a simple girl, the orphan child of a somewhat wealthy "statesman," that is what we should call a yeoman farmer. He married her, and afterwards ran away with as much of her money as he could get hold of, leaving her with the questionable title of Countess as her only consolation. This finale occurred after I had left.

I grieve deeply that I knew little at that time of the Lake Poets, except Byron's lines on the correct poetical creed-

"Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope ;

Thou shalt not trust in Words worth, n Coleridge, Southey    

In consequence, I made no effort to obtain the honour of seeing and possibly receiving some slight introduction to any one of its then living members. Neither did I ever see Dr. Arnold, though I walked with Strickland, one of our reading party and a former pupil of his, as far as his door, which he entered to spend half an hour with him, while I waited and envied.

Strickland was the son of a well-known Yorkshire baronet. He joined me in many pleasant walks from London after my college days, of which I especially recollect one in the then rural Isle of Wight, when there was little more than a single house at Shanklin,