They were the nursing mothers of his intellectual
infancy, and it is probably to his reverent but not blind esteem for
them, his earnest study of them, not merely as poets, but as men,
citizens, and friends, that much of the buoyancy and vigor of his poetry
is to be attributed. The 'Conversations' themselves are alive with that
enthusiasm and sympathetic inquiry that disproves the false saying of
the Parisian Aspasia of Landor--'Poets are soon too old for mutual
love.' They are the warm photographs of feeling as it bubbles from a
burning heart; sometimes burned over-deep, with a leaning to fanaticism,
but with so much of the generosity and justice of maturity in their
decisions that these necessary errors of an ardent youth are overlooked,
and the more as they have disappeared almost entirely from the
productions of later years. He betrays in his quick conception of an
author's mood and meaning a delicacy so extreme, an organization so
nervously alive to beauties and discords, and a religious sentiment so
cultured to the last degree of feeling, that we dread lest we shall
encounter the weakness, morbidness or bigotry that naturally results
from the contact of such a soul with the passions of everyday life,
recalling the oft-quoted '_Medio in fonte leporum_'--
'In the bowl where pleasures swim,
The bitter rises to the brim,
And roses from the veriest brake
May press the temples till they ache.
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