But the suspension of
intercourse with a friend never troubled him.
I became aware, in the course of a walking tour that I took with
him in those days, that he had a deep perception of the beauties of
nature; it was not a vague accessibility to picturesque
impressions, but a critical discernment of quality. He always said
that he cared more for little vignettes, which he could grasp
entire, than for wide and majestic prospects; and this was true of
his whole mind.
I suppose that I tended to idealise him; but he certainly seems to
me, in retrospect, to have then been invested with a singular
charm. He was pure-minded and fastidious to a fault. He had
considerable personal beauty, rather perhaps of expression than of
feature. He was one of those people with a natural grace of
movement, gesture and speech. He was wholly unembarrassed in
manner, but he talked little in a mixed company. No one had fewer
enemies or fewer intimate friends. The delightful ears soon came to
an end, and one of the few times I ever saw him exhibit strong
emotion was on the evening before he left Cambridge, when he
altogether broke down. I remember his quoting a verse from Omar
Khayyam:--
"Yet ah! that spring should vanish with the rose,
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close,"
and breaking off in the middle with sudden tears.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25