of Richard Fall, son of a neighbour on "the Hill," a boy without
affectation or morbidity of disposition whose complementary character
suited him well. An affectionate comradeship sprang up between the two
lads, and lasted, until in middle life they drifted apart, in no
ill-will, but each going on his own course to his own destiny.

Some real advance was made this winter (1831-32) with his Shelleyan
"Sonnet to a Cloud" and his imitations of Byron's "Hebrew Melodies,"
from which he learnt how to concentrate expression, and to use rich
vowel-sounds and liquid consonants with rolling effect. A deeper and
more serious turn of thought, that gradually usurped the place of the
first boyish effervescence, has been traced by him to the influence of
Byron, in whom, while others saw nothing more than wit and passion,
Ruskin perceived an earnest mind and a sound judgment.

But the most sincere poem--if sincerity be marked by unstudied phrase
and neglected rhyme--the most genuine "lyrical cry" of this period, is
that song in which our boy-poet poured forth his longing for the "blue
hills" he had loved as a baby, and for those Coniston crags over which,
when he became old and sorely stricken, he was still to see the morning
break. When he wrote these verses he was nearly fourteen, or just past
his birthday. It had been eighteen months since he had been in Wales,
and all the weary while he had seen no mountains; but in his regrets he
goes back a year farther still, to fix upon the Lakeland hills, less
majestic than Snowdon, but more endeared, and he describes his
sensations on approaching the beloved objects in the very terms that
Dante uses for his first sight of Beatrice:

"I weary for the fountain foaming,
For shady holm and hill;