It gives to those lighter matters on the surface of life and
literature among which he for the most part moved, a wonderful force of
expression, as if at any moment these slight words and fancies might
pierce very far into the deeper soul of things. In his writing, as in
his life, that quiet is not the low-flying of one from the first drowsy
by choice, and needing the prick of some strong passion or worldly
ambition, to stimulate him into all the energy of which he is capable;
but rather the reaction of nature, after an escape from fate, dark and
insane as in old Greek tragedy, following upon which the sense of mere
relief becomes a kind of passion, as with one who, having narrowly
escaped earthquake or shipwreck, finds a thing for grateful tears in
just sitting quiet at home, under the wall, till the end of days.
He felt the genius of places; and I sometimes think he resembles the
places he knew and liked best, and where his lot fell--London,
sixty-five years ago, with Covent Garden and the old theatres, and the
Temple gardens still unspoiled, Thames gliding down, and beyond to north
and south the fields at Enfield or Hampton, to which, "with their living
trees," the thoughts wander "from the hard wood of the desk"--fields
fresher, and coming nearer to town then, but in one of which the present
writer remembers, on a brooding early summer's day, to have heard the
cuckoo for the first time.
Pages:
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782