a man to have remained a private; in the nature of things, he
must have won his stripes. And yet here he was, without a pension. When
I touched on this problem, he would content himself with diffidently
offering me advice. "A man should be very careful when he is young,
sir. If you'll excuse me saying so, a spirited young gentleman like
yourself, sir, should be very careful. I was perhaps a trifle inclined
to atheistical opinions myself." For (perhaps with a deeper wisdom than
we are inclined in these days to admit) he plainly bracketed agnosticism
with beer and skittles.

Keats--John Keats, sir--and Shelley were his favourite bards. I cannot
remember if I tried him with Rossetti; but I know his taste to a hair,
and if ever I did, he must have doted on that author. What took him was
a richness in the speech; he loved the exotic, the unexpected word; the
moving cadence of a phrase; a vague sense of emotion (about nothing) in
the very letters of the alphabet: the romance of language. His honest
head was very nearly empty, his intellect like a child's; and when he
read his favourite authors, he can almost never have understood what he
was reading. Yet the taste was not only genuine, it was exclusive; I
tried in vain to offer him novels; he would none of them, he cared for
nothing but romantic language that he could not understand. The case may
be commoner than we suppose. I am reminded of a lad who was laid in the
next cot to a friend of mine in a public hospital, and who was no sooner
installed than he sent out (perhaps with his last pence) for a cheap
Shakespeare. My friend pricked up his ears; fell at once in talk with
his new neighbour, and was ready, when the book arrived, to make a
singular discovery. For this lover of great literature understood not
one sentence out of twelve, and his favourite part was that of which he
understood the least--the inimitable, mouth-filling rodomontade of the
ghost in _Hamlet_. It was a bright day in hospital when my friend
expounded the sense of this beloved jargon: a task for which I am
willing to believe my friend was very fit, though I can never regard it
as an easy one. I know indeed a point or two, on which I would gladly
question Mr. Shakespeare, that lover of big words, could he revisit the
glimpses of the moon, or could I myself climb backward to the spacious
days of Elizabeth. But, in the second case, I should most likely
pretermit these questionings, and take my place instea