after "the sex," which was one of his sweet phrases, and yet he was not
passionate. Passion does not dawdle and compliment, nor is it nasty,
as this fellow was. Passion may burn like a devouring flame; and in a
few moments, like flame, may bring down a temple to dust and ashes, but
it is earnest as flame, and essentially pure.

During the first two years at college my life was entirely external.
My heart was altogether untouched by anything I heard, read, or did,
although I myself supposed that I took an interest in them. But one
day in my third year, a day I remember as well as Paul must have
remembered afterwards the day on which he went to Damascus, I happened
to find amongst a parcel of books a volume of poems in paper boards.
It was called Lyrical Ballads, and I read first one and then the whole
book. It conveyed to me no new doctrine, and yet the change it wrought
in me could only be compared with that which is said to have been
wrought on Paul himself by the Divine apparition.

Looking over the Lyrical Ballads again, as I have looked over it a
dozen times since then, I can hardly see what it was which stirred me
so powerfully, nor do I believe that it communicated much to me which
could be put in words. But it excited a movement and a growth which
went on till, by degrees, all the systems which enveloped me like a
body gradually decayed from me and fell away into nothing. Of more
importance, too, than the decay of systems was the birth of a habit of
inner reference and a dislike to occupy myself with anything which did
not in some way or other touch the soul, or was not the illustration or
embodiment of some spiritual law.

There is, of course, a definite explanation to be given of one effect
produced by the Lyrical Ballads. God is nowhere formally deposed, and