[COYNE] RICHARD MAURICE BUCKE-A SKETCH 177 



were the formative influences in his earlier mental development. At 

 a later period he became profoundly interested in Francis Bacon, whom 

 he pronounced " incontestably the greatest intellect that the race has 

 produced," adding, " His prose is the best in our language." 



But matter-of-fact scientist as Bucke was by inclination and train- 

 ing, he had also the imaginative faculty developed in a high degree. 

 jSTot only in the light, which prism could analyze, whose wave lengths 

 and velocities could be computed, was he interested, but also in that 

 other % light that never was on sea or land," which defies analysis 

 and calculation. 



Shelley, " the poet's poet," was an early favourite. The charm 

 of the Adonais, the Prometheus and the Epipsychidion, held him to the 

 Jast. Tennyson and Browning were read with pleasure. Shake- 

 speare's dramas he regarded as " probably the noblest expression of 

 genius in any language — while his sonnets, to my mind, reach a 

 spiritual level as high as has ever been attained by man — as high as 

 that attained by St. John or by the author of the " Divine Lay,'! — 

 the ' Bagavad-Gita." " The passage quoted shows that he had added 

 to his stores of reading an acquaintance with the sacred books of the 

 East, and been profoundly impressed with their poetic and spiritual 

 content. 



He possessed a memory for poetry which was the admiration and 

 envy of his friends. He would repeat with profound appreciation 

 and appropriate expression the whole of the Adonais or Saul, Tenny- 

 son's " Eevenge," or sonnet after sonnet of Shakespeare, without book 

 and ^vithout a mistake that the hearer could detect. " Leaves of Grass," 

 from beginning to end, he seemed to know by heart. 



Dr. Bucke learned German to read Faust in the original, " and 

 found the poem worth the labour." This was followed by others of 

 Goethe's works. Goethe was among '•' the writers who distinctly, 

 though not markedly," influenced his mental evolution. 



Dr. Bucke was not only an idealist, Ijut a mystic, and the com- 

 bination of these charjicteristics with literary culture and the scientific 

 temperament and training forms an interesting psychological study. 

 His literary product is the resultant of these forces, working upon an 

 ardent and energetic nature. 



20. 



We now come to an event which Dr. Bucke regarded as pivotal 

 in connection with what he deemed his most important life-work. 



In 1867, Dr. Sterry Hunt, visiting Dr. Bucke at Sarnia, mentioned 

 the name and quoted some verses of Walt Whitman. The effect on 



