enrich the soil of their
minds with continual accessions of borrowed strength and beauty. I might
take this opportunity of observing, that the person of the most refined
and least contracted taste I ever knew was the late Joseph Fawcett, the
friend of my youth. He was almost the first literary acquaintance I ever
made, and I think the most candid and unsophisticated. He had a masterly
perception of all styles and of every kind and degree of excellence,
sublime or beautiful, from Milton's _Paradise Lost_ to Shenstone's
_Pastoral Ballad,_ from Butler's _Analogy_ down to _Humphrey Clinker._
If you had a favourite author, he had read him too, and knew all the
best morsels, the subtle traits, the capital touches. 'Do you like
Sterne?' 'Yes, to be sure,' he would say; 'I should deserve to be hanged
if I didn't!' His repeating some parts of _Comus_ with his fine, deep,
mellow-toned voice, particularly the lines, 'I have heard my mother
Circe with the Sirens three,' etc., and the enthusiastic comments he
made afterwards, were a feast to the ear and to the soul. He read the
poetry of Milton with the same fervour and spirit of devotion that I
have since heard others read their own. 'That is the most delicious
feeling of all,' I have heard him explain, 'to like what is excellent,
no matter whose it is.' In this respect he practised what he preached.
He was incapable of harbouring a sinister motive, and judged only from
what he felt. There was no flaw or mist in the clear mirror of his mind.
He was as open to impressions as he was strenuous in maintaining them.
He did not care a rush whether a writer was old or new, in prose or in
verse--'What he wanted,' he said, 'was something to make him think.'
Most men's minds are to me like musical instruments out of tune. Touch a
particular key, and it jars and makes harsh discord with your own. They
like _Gil Blas,_ but can see nothing to laugh at in _Don Quixote:_ they
adore Richardson, but are disgusted with Fielding. Fawcett had a taste
accommodated to all these. He was not exceptious. He gave a cordial
welcome to all sort, provided they were the best in their kind. He was
not fond of counterfeits or duplicates. His own style was laboured and
artificial to a fault, while his character was frank and ingenuous
in the extreme. He was not the only individual whom I have known to
counteract their natural disposition in coming before the public, and
by avoiding what they perhaps thought an inhe