much in him a wonderfully acute and sensitive perception of his
own existence. An imaginative and susceptible person has, indeed, ten
times as much life as a dull fellow, "an he be Hercules." He multiplies
himself in a thousand objects, associates each with his own identity,
lives in each, and almost looks upon the world with its infinite objects
as a part of his individual being. Afterwards, as he tames down, he
withdraws his forces into the citadel, but he still has a knowledge of,
and an interest in, the land they once covered. He understands
other people, for he has lived in other people--the dead and the
living;--fancied himself now Brutus and now Caesar, and thought how _he_
should act in almost every imaginable circumstance of life.

Thus, when he begins to paint human characters, essentially different
from his own, his knowledge comes to him almost intuitively. It is as if
he were describing the mansions in which he himself has formerly
lodged, though for a short time. Hence in great writers of History--of
Romance--of the Drama--the _gusto_ with which they paint their
personages; their creations are flesh and blood, not shadows or
machines.

Maltravers was at first, then, an egotist, in the matter of his rude and
desultory sketches--in the manner, as I said before, he was careless and
negligent, as men will be who have not yet found that expression is
an art. Still those wild and valueless essays--those rapt and secret
confessions of his own heart--were a delight to him. He began to taste
the transport, the intoxication of an author. And, oh, what a luxury
is there in that first love of the Muse! that process by which we give
palpable form to the long-intangible visions which have flitted across
us;--the beautiful ghost of the Ideal within us, which we invoke in the
Gadara of our still closets, with the wand of the simple pen!

It was early noon, the day after he had formed his acquaintance with the
De Montaignes, that Maltravers sat in his favourite room;--the one
he had selected for his study from the many chambers of his large and
solitary habitation. He sat in a recess by the open window, which looked
on the lake; and books were scattered on his table, and Maltravers
was jotting down his criticisms on what he read, mingled with
his impressions on what he saw. It is the pleasantest kind of
composition--the note-book of a man who studies in retirement, who
observes in society, who in all things can admire an