of breaking out from inward impatience, "I know
what you are going to say--I hear the severe sentence of condemnation
with which you dismiss the author; and I will admit that I should have
perfectly agreed with you only a day or two ago, and been of the same
opinion, not so much from conviction, as from anger that the author
should have entered upon paths which must for ever carry him away from
me, Bo that a re-encounter between us must have appeared scarcely
conceivable, and moreover, almost not to be desired. It would have been
quite justifiable for the world, considering the manner in which the
author had commenced his career, to think that there was evidence of an
untruthful inconstancy--a weathercockiness--of mind, disposed to cast
over others the veil which self-deception had woven around him;
although, all this time, the truth had torn this veil asunder, with
rude vigour, so that the world could discern, in his heart, a wicked
spirit of self-seeking, endeavouring to gain the glitter of false fame
for purposes of self-beatification. But I am obliged to confess that
his preface to his sacred drama, 'The Mother of the Macabees,' has
completely disarmed me. And this preface can only be perfectly
understood by the few friends of his who were closely associated with
him in his most beautiful blossoming-time. It contains the most
affecting admissions of culpable weaknesses; the most pathetic
lamentations over powers for ever lost. Those things may have escaped
the writer involuntarily, and it is very likely that he did not,
himself, perceive that deeper significance which the friends whom he
had abandoned must have seen in those words. As I read this preface, I
seemed to see, through a dim, colourless ocean of cloud, rays feebly
piercing of a lofty, noble spirit, rising beyond the crack-brained
follies of immature perversity, and, if not fully conscious of its own
value, yet possessing a considerable inkling of its worth. The writer
seemed to me much like one of those who are victims of that form of
insanity of which the predominant symptom is 'fixed idea.' Those
unhappy people are, in their lucid intervals, aware of their delusions;
but, to soothe the comfortless horror of that consciousness, they
strive to convince themselves that in those very delusions their
highest and truest existence lives and moves. And this they do by the
most ingenious sophisms; striving also to induce themselves to believe
that their conscious