ensed fiction, licensed to my
recordedly relaxed state; and what this particular luxury represented it
might have taken me even more time than I had to give to make out. The
blest novel in three volumes exercised through its form, to my sense, on
grounds lying deeper for me to-day than my deepest sounding, an appeal
that fairly made it do with me what it would. Possibly a drivelling
confession, and the more drivelling perhaps the more development I
should attempt for it; from which, however, the very difficulty of the
case saves me. Too many associations, too much of the ferment of memory
and fancy, are somehow stirred; they beset me again, they hover and
whirl about me while I stand, as I used to stand, within the positively
sanctified walls of the shop (so of the _vieux temps_ now their aspect
and fashion and worked system: by which I mean again of the frumpiest
and civillest mid-Victorian), and surrender to the vision of the shelves
packed with their rich individual trinities. Why should it have affected
me so that my choice, so difficult in such a dazzle, could only be for a
trinity? I am unable fully to say--such a magic dwelt in the mere rich
fact of the trio. When the novel of that age was "bad," as it so
helplessly, so abjectly and prevailingly consented to be, the three
volumes still did something for it, a something that was, all strangely,
not an aggravation of its case. When it was "good" (our analysis, our
terms of appreciation, had a simplicity that has lingered on) they made
it copiously, opulently better; so that when, after the span of the
years, my relation with them became, from that of comparatively artless
reader, and to the effect of a superior fondness and acuteness, that of
complacent author, the tradition of infatuated youth still flung over
them its mantle: this at least till _all_ relation, by one of the very
rudest turns of life we of the profession were to have known, broke off,
in clumsy interfering hands and with almost no notice given, in a day,
in an hour. Besides connecting me with the lost but unforgotten note of
waiting service and sympathy that quavered on the Merridew air, they
represented just for intrinsic charm more than I could at any moment
have given a plain account of; they fell, by their ineffable history,
every trio I ever touched, into the category of such prized phenomena as
my memory, for instance, of fairly hanging about the Rue des Vieillards,
at the season I speak of, t