288 THE LAST SUMMERS AND WINTERS. 



years or two, and then look back, and they will see a name 

 of which they may well be proud. 



" I partly agree in what you say as to your personal 

 acquaintance with the poet not having deepened your 

 realisation of the poet's mind. I had always great plea- 

 sure from my own personal intercourse with him, but 

 it was not on account of his personal attributes, or even 

 for the sake of any intellectual excellence then exhibited, 

 but because I knew him to be the medium through which 

 his Creator had willed that so many pure and elevating 

 thoughts should be conveyed to the minds of meaner mor- 

 tals by his writings. I think him a transcendent poet, 

 not of the very highest class (Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, 

 Milton, he may not sit with), yet altogether unequalled in 

 our day and generation ; but as regards general intellectual 

 energy and power, force of character, range of knowledge, 

 and other attributes which raise one man above another, 

 I have known many his superiors. I daresay he lived too 

 much alone for the cultivation or increase of those more 

 discursive (I mean conversational) faculties to which I 

 have referred, and with no one ' near the throne ; ' and it 

 is a bad thing, intellectually as well as otherwise, for any 

 man to have everything his own way. On the other hand, 

 we owe the rich treasures which he has left behind mainly 

 to the contemplations of his solitude, and should be thank- 

 ful for the same. There is no doubt that he was a great 



