beneath the fire and blessedness of passion.

Thus, to master the severe idea of Sophoclean art, una find an echo to my own heart's language in the silve of anapaest and iambic, the calm words which c such intensity of feeling, I should have presumpt misesteemed this great Poet, if the strong testimo centuries had not warned me that one reward of m years might be initiation into his mysteries: and f narrative of those years I reserve some notice of t of analogous experiences.

XIV Scott and Shakspeare were read to me, even than by me, so early, that the thought of these w hardly suggested books; they were living presences the pages were opened, and a dear voice, long silent heard, unfolded the incidents of Waverley' or o Tempest', a something, to my youthful fancy, seem have entered the room; whilst pursuing our co tasks, we were yet breathing a new atmosphere. immortal work called up its own colour and to feelings, a world peopled with peculiar shapes; I b part of what I listened to. A local habitation, an vidual landscape attached itself to every romance or a background before which the actors seemed inva moving. Long before visiting them, I had a land and a Venice of my own; a fairy island and a for Ferdinand and Miranda beyond the research of t lers. I have seen the palaces that edge the Brenta or star the green slopes of Mosolente, but no Belmon there; I have seen Verona, but not the balcony of J And, opening now Scott or Shakspeare, thi child's vision haunts me yet; the actual scenes occur; I am still moving about in worlds never realized.

e.

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Every picture in the magical series then gave equal pleasure in itself; but 'Ivanhoe' allowed me, I remember, the special delight of identifying the fair heroine with at least the outward features of Désirée. This was exceptional; yet throughout this region Désirée was spiritually present. It was not that in such moments I thought of her consciously, heard her voice in every song, or saw her countenance in Lucy or Beatrice or Imogen. To the quickly ranging mind of boyhood, eager for the story, or absorbed in the verse, such unceasing immanence of passion is perhaps impossible; I, at least, cannot claim it. But Love, I may truly say, had lent the light in which Genius now appeared before me; strengthened the soul to grasp the manlier forms and 'certain step' of Heroism, or planted eyes of recognition for the footprints of Beauty. Deep passion gives the mind depth, or seems to give: we see not only further into the soul of things, but refer every circumstance and incident to a hidden unity, to a larger law. The whole world seems to radiate from our own heart's mistress; she is the true point of the converging forces of Nature; the unknown and stellar centre of the universe. Why should philosophers inquire further? Désirée, I could have said, is what you seek.-Love, subordinating the many to the one, teaches us science before we are aware; we have entered without knowing it on a new life, and feel that we are less children than we thought ourselves.

XV Thus she whose image distracted my thoughts from study, first animated me to study with thought. But this advance was gradual and tardy. In the reading hitherto mentioned, the story for itself had been my main interest that was indeed secretly sustained by the writer's essential gifts, but I could not as yet separate these

from the narration, or take pleasure in imaginative lence itself, regarded as a distinct thing; in the p briefly, for poetry's sake. I hesitate and regret almo hint, so many tender memories, so much gratitu associated with the great works then read to me,by this mode of acquaintanceship, interest in the more than in the poetical truth and power, receive young hearers, a rather undue emphasis: the natura of youth is over-strengthened, as, (on the stage), the a hurries us on too rapidly for perception of individual of beauty, or, if felt, we cannot linger over them. meanwhile, I was myself incapable of such deeper app tion. I listened to Shakspeare; but I read Pope. Alth grateful now to this poet for much enduring pleasure admiring his truly conscientious and artist-like finis noble good sense, keenness, and courage, I see th boyhood what attracted me was the monotony of Pope's syllables, the lines which were comprehensible wi effort, the bitterness of his often one-sided wrath and exasperation against rivals. How sad and weak thi the satire of the 'Anti-Jacobin', which soon after I al revelled in, now seem! Satirical writings, beyond al any others, I think, should be kept from the young; seem framed to influence them unduly. A few years' rience gives us the needful balance of facts for judgi and we may read Pope, and Juvenal, and Horace, 'glorious gain': but then, the pointed verse drive caricature home, the storm of poignant invective persu and every couplet infects with prejudice. . . . I tu 'fields invested with larger and purer aether'. Ch 'bel' and the Ancient Mariner', the visions of Coleri mighty youth, or the divine landscapes of the All and 'Penseroso', were the first poems, if I rightl

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member, which I began, but imperfectly, to delight in as such slowly my mind was attuned to their high and passionate thoughts by the music to which they were chanted.

XVI Each great writer, and the holy poets most, from the more pervadent unity of their writings, is 'Lord of a 'vast province', Creator of his own world, King of a separate star. Of these realms, some we visit in youth; others we gaze at, it may be, for years; but prejudice, indolence, or caprice, delay our entrance. We visit them all perhaps at last, but are not always admitted to citizenship, and sometimes decline it. Summing up the incidents of life, I must count it an evil that several years of my youth, how many I should be ashamed to tell, were lost to Wordsworth. This was partly personal dulness; partly the sense of a certain want of passion, the passion of love especially, in this noble poet; partly the misguiding effect of Byron's flippant satire, and that, I know not whether cowardice or animation, which leads the young always to side with the laughers. I am ignorant if any nation built temples to Momus; but I think that no God in this age receives more costly sacrifices. And did Byron recompense me this wrong? O no he appeals to our youth mainly by secondT rate heroism; by sarcasms, inconsiderate and merciless; by humorous exposure of the hypocrisy of our elders, and encouragement to the passions that need no inciting. But this is the vulgar side, the mere aristocratic, of Byron. Looking at them now no longer as rivals, I am thankful that two such men should have spoken our thoughts for should have prophesied for their century, in the Excur'sion and in the Pilgrimage". This knowledge, however, was then far from me. Wordsworth, it is allowed, is rarely felt by the young; and I think Byron, in his essential elements, rarely can be. The sight of other lands, the expe

6

Great foct

• The god of

Weds with

censure and moctions

us,

rience of life and of sorrow, these are needful before a can really fathom the force, and truth, and passio warmth of this great genius; his deep sympathy 'justice, kindness, and courage; his intense reach of He has a thousand faults (for this knowledge must come) but such merits cover all. If more were needed remember Byron's glorious death, and multum dilexit epitaph.

XVII Although, however, I still turned with for contempt from Wordsworth, and thought it an ad judgment exquisitely humorous and original to re with servile obsequiousness the miserable criticism of popular judges on Shelley, Keats, and Tennyson, poets, pitying perhaps this blindness, by their sweet I led me on to some. sympathy with the Imagination Fancy in themselves-to some love of poetry for its sake. Sooner or later, this change must have com was immediately due to the accident by which and work or series of works had now superseded Scott's fo holiday evening lecture. Taking them up for m 'Kenilworth', the first so read, was a tumultuous floc delight, a day's pageantry and revel. If, as now he tened through Scott's remaining and later novels, a ce hollowness in the purely human life of the principal ch ters, a too great reliance on antiquarian research bec even to a boy, perceptible-the newly-gained consciou of their perpetual poetry of sentiment was far more compensation. And, mastered by this feeling, when bright summer's day (for this too has its influence), many glowing pages of the pathetic Monastery', I, sy thising with the hero's passion and if I remember rig with the circumstances of his love, reached Halbert's I cation to the Lady of Avenel, the Spirit herself, I bel