

LIFE AT STOCKHOLM 83 



upon a good deal. He had conquered his position by 

 sheer force of will ; he 



Had miscellaneous large experience had 

 Of human acts, good, half and half, and bad. 



By industry and tact he had gained, without undue 

 dorsoflexions, a fixed point whence to step to higher 

 and higher positions. Anticipating Schlegel's solution 

 of the mystery of life, ' the strife of necessity against the 

 will,' Linnaeus had harmonised the two and made him- 

 self happy. 



I have dared 



Come to a pause with knowledge, scan for once 

 The heights already reached, without regard 

 To the extent above ; fairly compute 

 All I have clearly gained ; for once excluding 

 A brilliant future to supply and perfect 

 All half -gains and conjectures and crude hopes. 1 



In his chosen profession (natural history), without 

 being in the least a poet, in the sense of being a ver- 

 sifier, Carl had the keenest sense of what there was in 

 it of beautiful, or delicate, or ideal, ' drinking in deep 

 in his soul the beautiful hue and the clearness ' of love, 

 that gives a light to everything, as the southern sun 

 illumines even rags to gold and silver tissue, and squalid 

 buildings to a chiaroscuro of artistic splendour. But, 

 as with all men of talent, the science of erotion could not 

 be exclusively nor indefinitely studied. Carl's heart beat 

 in his brain ; and though he could not anatomise his 

 love, he knew its capabilities and uses, and in due time 

 he folded up its robes of state and laid them aside ; his 

 1 Paracelsus, Browning. 



o 2 



