fair dress on his darling rhymes!

Cesarini read well and feelingly. Everything was in favour of the
reader. His own poetical countenance--his voice, his enthusiasm,
half-suppressed--the pre-engaged interest of the auditor--the dreamy
loveliness of the hour and scene--(for there is a great deal as to time
in these things). Maltravers listened intently. It is very difficult to
judge of the exact merit of poetry in another language even when we
know that language well--so much is there in the untranslatable magic of
expression, the little subtleties of style. But Maltravers, fresh, as
he himself had said, from the study of great and original writers,
could not but feel that he was listening to feeble though melodious
mediocrity. It was the poetry of words, not things. He thought it cruel,
however, to be hypercritical, and he uttered all the commonplaces of
eulogium that occurred to him. The young man was enchanted: "And yet,"
said he with a sigh, "I have no Public. In England they would appreciate
me." Alas! in England, at that moment, there were five hundred poets as
young, as ardent, and yet more gifted, whose hearts beat with the same
desire--whose nerves were broken by the same disappointments.

Maltravers found that his young friend would not listen to any judgment
not purely favourable. The archbishop in _Gil Blas_ was not more touchy
upon any criticism that was not panegyric. Maltravers thought it a bad
sign, but he recollected Gil Blas, and prudently refrained from bringing
on himself the benevolent wish of "beaucoup de bonheur et un peu, plus
de bon gout." When Cesarini had finished his MS., he was anxious to
conclude the excursion--he longed to be at home, and think over the
admiration he had excited. But he left his poems with Maltravers, and
getting on shore by the remains of Pliny's villa, was soon out of sight.

Maltravers that evening read the poems with attention. His first opinion
was confirmed. The young man wrote without knowledge. He had never felt
the passions he painted, never been in the situations he described.
There was no originality in him, for there was no experience; it was
exquisite mechanism, his verse,--nothing more. It might well deceive
him, for it could not but flatter his ear--and Tasso's silver march rang
not more musically than did the chiming stanzas of Castruccio Cesarini.

The perusal of this poetry, and his conversation with the poet, threw
Maltravers into a fit of deep musing.