Note 628 — THE BLUES:[609] A LITERARY ECLOGUE.

{585}[Sir George Beaumont, Bart., of Coleorton, Leicestershire (1753-1827), landscape-painter, art critic, and picture-collector, one of the founders of the National Gallery, married, in 1778, Margaret Willis, granddaughter of Chief Justice Willis. She corresponded with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, and with Coleridge (see Memorials of Coleorton, 1888). Coleridge visited the Beaumonts for the first time at Dunmore, in 1804. "I was not received here," he tells Wordsworth, "with mere kindness; I was welcomed almost as you welcomed me when first I visited you at Racedown" (Letters of S. T. Coleridge, 1895, ii. 459). Scott (Memoirs of the life, etc., 1838, ii, II) describes Sir George Beaumont as "by far the most sensible and pleasing man I ever knew, kind, too, in his nature, and generous and gentle in society.... He was the great friend of Wordsworth, and understood his poetry."]