nqueror,--it is his nature and the untamable impulse that has given
him power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, nor
revere, and perhaps, also, he would only laugh at you if you did; but
you like him heartily, and like to see him the powerful smith, the
Siegfried, melting all the old iron in his furnace till it glows to a
sunset red, and burns you if you senselessly go too near. He seemed to
me quite isolated, lonely as the desert; yet never was man more fitted
to prize a man, could he find one to match his mood. He finds such,
but only in the past. He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a
kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and
generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which,
serves as a _refrain_ when his song is full, or with which as with a
knitting-needle he catches up the stitches if he has chanced now
and then to let fall a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has no
sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously
absurd; he sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then
begins anew with fresh vigor; for all the spirits he is driving before
him seem to him as Fata Morganas, ugly masks, in fact, if he can but
make them turn about, but he laughs that they seem to others such
dainty Ariels. He puts out his chin sometimes till it looks like the
beak of a bird, and his eyes flash bright instinctive meanings like
Jove's bird; yet he is not calm and grand enough for the eagle: he
is more like the falcon, and yet not of gentle blood enough for that
either. He is not exactly like anything but himself, and therefore you
cannot see him without the most hearty refreshment and good-will, for
he is original, rich, and strong enough to afford a thousand, faults;
one expects some wild land in a rich kingdom. His talk, like his
books, is full of pictures, his critical strokes masterly; allow for
his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject;
I cannot speak more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it; his works
are true, to blame and praise him, the Siegfried of England, great and
powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy
evil than legislate for good. At all events, he seems to be what
Destiny intended, and represents fully a certain side; so we make no
remonstrance as to his being and proceeding for himself, though we
sometimes must for us.

I had meant some remarks on some fin