pedantry or the world's sneer at imaginative enthusia
Virgil, as in the middle ages, is a magician still. A
personal companion, with whom more than most liv
comrades I had held converse of delightful intimacy
loved him then, and love him now: I would not surren
this visionary affection for many so-called realities. Oth
too are similarly dear: if there be any recognition af
the grave, how rich I am, and in what friends! But m
the lines painting in purple light and with a grace alm
superhuman the image of passion, allured me. Th
seemed a prophetic anticipation: songs written nomina
indeed for imperial Rome, but in their secret esse
destined after nineteen centuries to be a boy's delight, a
carry the praises of Beauty beneath the beech-woods
world-exiled and inaccessible Britain. The seer, as m
said of old, blended with the poet. Virgil, in his purp
robed and laurelled majesty, had stooped to whis
messages of tenderness to an English child: it was Vir
who bade me track that Star by the road of manly exc
lence. If any one had asked me, when reading for
hundredth time the Little one, I saw thee gathering
'dewy apples' (lines already quoted), what I read, I mig
have answered,Of Désirée'. Turnus' dying phrase, th
last cry wrung forth when surrendering his bride to o
less worthy, the tua est Lavinia conjux', shook me,
recollect, with oracular terror by its intensity of passiona
resignation:

Hic gelidi fontes; hic mollia prata, Lycori;
hic nemus: hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo-

summed up the sweet abandonment of a desire which, wit Gallus, I was to learn could be consummated by no labou and conquered by no defeat. Is it a childis

husiasm, 1. As a t living macy, I

rrender Others

on after ut most almost

These minally

essence

ht, and

pods of

as men

purple

whisper Virgil excelFor the

ng the might

e, that

Co one

me, I

ionate

with

bour, Idish

pleasure to record these little things? If so, I am a child
yet.

:

XXII I have dwelt with some minuteness on my first studies, because, whatever growth of mind belongs to the years under narration was in fact the result mainly of these and of the passion of love. For even at the time I was not much influenced by the premature friendships, since faded, of school: thinking of them almost as contrasts to set off and glorify that ever-present image of Désirée and this the more, because the strongly marked, and I might say tumultuous, avowal of boyish affection, was in its nature antagonistic to the sweet silent secrecy of that other. Nor, again, were the general direction and spirit of the study inculcated, in themselves (I think) elevated, or such as impress those on the threshold of youth: the crises of intellectual life came to any, if they came at all, not from superior guidance, not from a scientifically ordered scheme of education, but through their individual thought, through personal and private intercourse (and perhaps better so) with the master-spirits. I recollect indeed always with affection the venerable buildings in the old Cathedral city, and the green places where the children of to-day are playing: but it is chiefly an alien interest—the remembrance of the golden-haired child who seemed to leave her own home daily, and all day long, to haunt the trees, and fields, and dark cloisters, and crowded schoolroom, the quaint nooks and slovenly dens in which boys love to ensconce themselves, and consecrate every commonplace into Heaven. More, far more deeply than any associations derived from school, is she interfused in my school recollections. I believe that in those days (and some will not think it a weakness) I never entered the great boisterous hall or left it, never completed any task requiring exercise of youthful powers

1

(and thus a symbol of the prize of life), never took place in one of the more ambitious games, in cricket-field football, without supplication for blessing on her, and me through her. It is no fine fancy, no figure of wo but with strong and sober reason that, looking back that golden time and the first fires of love, I see her, only with the noble Poet in sunshine and moonlight, fi and billow, in the world without me; but far more and higher issues in the world within; Darling first and la in hopes and in regrets, in sport and study, in the strugg of earth and the aspirations higherward. The dear pare might guide by love and by example, friends counsel, a masters instruct :- -but Désirée was my education.

XXIII Meanwhile, lest any one should judge the t invidiously by the fruits, and do her image wrong by co parison with her young lover's, he hastens to add, a thi already perhaps evident, that Désirée's direct example he and could hold, but little place in this powerful influend that the dear child was herself absolutely unconscious of t force and the fascination; and that her immanence in secret soul furnished not a law for conscience, so much a central point to which all consciousness referred itself an ideal height, the ascent of which it was his aim in life compass. Ideal I have called it, but it was not the le real to me; nay, the reality of realities. This hope, of cours animated to labour and consoled defeat; by it, in these a the following years at college, I so far conquered a fooli disposition to fancy and reverie, as (under great extern advantages) to become a fair scholar, and achieve here a there some little useful success :- success achieved alwa in her name, for her only; and O! I repent of the wor how deeply useless, a mere child's victory, when at last s refused acceptance. If the Goddess spurned the crow

}

took my -field or and on f words, back to her, not

ht, field - and to

nd last, ruggles parents sel, and

he tree y com

thing e held, uence; of the

in his

ach as Selflife to

e less ourse,

se and polish cernal

e and
ways

word,

t she

own,

laid on bending knees before her feet in Acropolis by some
youthful Athenian, what worth was it to be Olympiocon-
queror ?
What then but a few grey leaves, that crown
itself, so lately the central aim of hope, the loadstar of
Panhellenic ambition? Not such, in truth, were my
triumphs but I gave her in heart all I had :-could I do
more, could I do less, than stake life on such as Désirée ?

Yet whilst confessing for Truth's sake, and without the
very least sensation of pleasurable pride, how far the wisdom
of love guided me to the love of wisdom, in any points
lying without the sphere of that powerful influence, the
faults of nature, I shall not conceal, ranged unchecked.
Foolish cowardice before others' opinion, foolish longings
for wealth, weak shame-these sins against light I confess
in their full, their degrading baseness. Vices of temper,
and not such as the novelist paints either as incompatible
with their opposites or exaggerations of some nobler
quality, but stubbornness and pliability, hasty heat and
sullenness, oppression of the weak around me, and irreverent
contempt of worth and power, scorn of tenderness, coarse-
ness and conceit—I might lengthen the list, could such a
catalogue have any charm. Dear Dr. Johnson stood a
winter's day bareheaded on the site of Michael Johnson's
bookstall in the market-place of Uttoxeter, contrite and
confessing himself ashamed before all men, at his boyish
shame for his father's profession. Let me add this

only: I remember I blushed to think myself less favoured
than some of my companions in parental rank or wealth,
and trust that what I thus record against myself may be
my forgiveness and atonement.

XXIV It is perhaps hard to say, whether youthful ani-
mation, the high and healthy vɛavixóv pgóvnμa, even without
the reinforcement of special passion, might not have brought

H

with it by natural process that enheartened energy whic have ascribed to the influence of Désirée. But a m glorious gain was it, and hers far more certainly, that, operating with holy home guidance, this love carried unharmed through the ambush of young days', and facilities for delightful sin. Often when friends, then afterwards, discussing, treated as a natural weakness physical necessity (for this, to speak truth, which here least is without what moralists imagine her insepara beauty, is men's almost uniform and genuine decisio the

κρυπταδίη φιλότης καὶ μείλιχα δώρα καὶ εὐνή,

-did the faintest half remembrance of Désirée chase ar ment or confession from my mind; not refuted, perhaps, effaced practically by that angel form of young imaginat who seemed to purify not her own sex alone, but mine w it. How should others feel the force of this? God had given them Désirée, I had no need then, as I have

desire now, to enter on such discussion. Often, how oft when the temptation came with promises of pleasure youth so exquisite (let me once more speak truth, it is be and truth this time less contestable), with facilities justifying, that to refuse appeared not only an immense a painful effort, but as not a few, I am aware, with smiles judge it this moment, whilst they read, an unmanly foolis ness, remembrance of her again silenced every reasoni and impulse with a sensation stronger still: a joy profoundly passionate that it passed into 'pure orga 'pleasure'; a bodily translation, it almost seemed, into kingdom more heavenly than heaven. The dark street v a porch opening on midsummer sunlight: I answered t soft smiles of alluring lasses with smiles I could not