iness which she endured, and the
kisses she suffered, cold as green buds, were charities, but frankly
glows to his avowal with 'I love you, too, dear Jack,' and kisses him
from the first with mouth like a June rose--so did that _blase_ poet
cast away his conventional Fahrenheit, and call Narcissus friend in
their first hour. Men of genius alone know that fine _abandon_ of soul.
In such is the poet confessed as unmistakably as in his verse, for the
one law of his life is that he be an elemental, and the capacity for
great simple impressions is the spring of his power. Let him beware of
losing that.

I sometimes wonder as I come across the last frivolous gossip concerning
that poet in the paragraphs of the new journalism, or meet his name in
some distinguished bead-roll in _The Morning Post_, whether Narcissus
was not, after all, mistaken about him, and whether he could still,
season after season, go through the same stale round of reception,
private view, first night, and all the various drill of fashion and
folly, if that boy's heart were alive still. One must believe it once
throbbed in him: we have his poems for that, and a poem cannot lie; but
it is hard to think that it could still keep on its young beating
beneath such a choking pressure of convention, and in an air so 'sunken
from the healthy breath of morn.' But, on the other hand, I have almost
a superstitious reliance on Narcissus' intuition, a faculty in him which
not I alone have marked, but which I know was the main secret of his
appeal for women. They, as the natural possessors of the power, feel a
singular kinship with a man who also possesses it, a gift as rarely
found among his sex as that delicacy which largely depends on it, and
which is the other sure clue to a woman's love. She is so little used,
poor flower, to be understood, and to meet with other regard than the
gaze of satyrs.

However, be Narcissus' intuition at fault or not in the main, still it
was very sure that the boy's heart in that man of the world did wake
from its sleep for a while at the wandlike touch of his youth; and if,
after all, as may be, Narcissus was but a new sensation in his jaded
round, at least he was a healthy one. Nor did the callous ingratitude of
forgetfulness which follows so swiftly upon mere sensation ever add
another to the sorrows of my friend: for, during the last week before he
left us, came a letter of love and cheer in that poet's wonderful
handwriting--hand