he qualities with which he invested them were
almost all ideal, nor could have stood the test of a month's, or even
week's, cohabitation. It was but the reflection of his own bright
conceptions that he saw in each new object; and while persuading himself
that they furnished the models of his heroines, he was, on the contrary,
but fancying that he beheld his heroines in them.

There needs no stronger proof of the predominance of imagination in
these attachments than his own serious avowal, in the Journal already
given, that often, when in the company of the woman he most loved, he
found himself secretly wishing for the solitude of his own study. It was
_there_, indeed,--in the silence and abstraction of that study,--that
the chief scene of his mistress's empire and glory lay. It was there
that, unchecked by reality, and without any fear of the disenchantments
of truth, he could view her through the medium of his own fervid fancy,
enamour himself of an idol of his own creating, and out of a brief
delirium of a few days or weeks, send forth a dream of beauty and
passion through all ages.

While such appears to have been the imaginative character of his loves,
(of all, except the one that lived unquenched through all,) his
friendships, though, of course, far less subject to the influence of
fancy, could not fail to exhibit also some features characteristic of
the peculiar mind in which they sprung. It was a usual saying of his
own, and will be found repeated in some of his letters, that he had "no
genius for friendship," and that whatever capacity he might once have
possessed for that sentiment had vanished with his youth. If in saying
thus he shaped his notions of friendship according to the romantic
standard of his boyhood, the fact must be admitted: but as far as the
assertion was meant to imply that he had become incapable of a warm,
manly, and lasting friendship, such a charge against himself was unjust,
and I am not the only living testimony of its injustice.

To a certain degree, however, even in his friendships, the effects of a
too vivid imagination, in disqualifying the mind for the cold contact of
reality, were visible. We are told that Petrarch (who, in this respect,
as in most others, may be regarded as a genuine representative of the
poetic character,) abstained purposely from a too frequent intercourse
with his nearest friends, lest, from the sensitiveness he was so aware
of in himself, there should occur a