upon him through books. A book
was the master key that unlocked all his senses, that unfolded the
varied landscape, animated the hero, painted the flower, swelled the
orchestra of wind and ocean, peopled the plains of India with
starvelings and the mountains of Afghanistan with cut-throats. Without
a book he moved about like a shadow lost in some dim dreamland of
echoes.

Everyone knew he was a scholar, and his thoughts had once or twice
rung out to the world clear and loud as a trumpet-note through the
oracles of the Press. But in society he was shy, awkward, and uncouth
of speech, quite unable to marshal his thoughts, deserted by his
memory, abashed before his own silences, and startled by his own
words. Any fool who could talk about the legs of a horse or the height
of the thermometer was Prospero to this social Caliban.

He felt that before the fine instincts of women his infirmity was
especially conspicuous, and he drifted into misogyny through
bashfulness and pride; and yet misogyny was incompatible with his
scheme of life and his ambition. He felt himself to be worthy of the
full diapason of home life; he desired to be as other men were,
besides being something more.

[Greek: Kakon gynaikes all' homos, o daemotai,
Ouk estin oikein oikian aneu kakou.
Kai gar to gaemai, kai to mae gaemai, kakon.]

So he married her who loved him for choosing her, and who reverenced
him for his mysterious treasures of thought.

There was much in his life that she could never share: but he longed
for companionship in thought, and for the first year of their married
life he tried to introduce her to his world. He led her slowly up to
the quiet hill-tops of thought where the air is still and clear, and
he gave her to drink of the magic fountains of music. Their hearts
beat one delicious measure. Her gentle nature was plastic under the
poet's touch, wrought in an instant to perfect harmony with love, or
tears, or laughter. To read aloud to her in the evening after the
day's work was over, and to see her stirred by every breath of the
thought-storm, was to enjoy an exquisite interpretation of the poet's
motive, like an impression bold and sharp from the matrix of the
poet's mind. This was to hear the song of the poet and Nature's low
echo. How tranquilising it was! How it effaced the petty vexations of
the day!--"softening and concealing; and busy with a hand of healing."

Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poe