inevitable--while at the same time setting in motion no machinery of
experience in which his curiosity, or in other words, the quickness of
his familiarity, didn't move faster than anything else.




II


I owe to his intimate and devoted friend Mr Edward Marsh the
communication of many of his letters, these already gathered into an
admirable brief memoir which is yet to appear and which will give ample
help in the illustrative way to the pages to which the present remarks
form a preface, and which are collected from the columns of the London
evening journal in which they originally saw the light. The "literary
baggage" of his short course consists thus of his two slender volumes of
verse and of these two scarcely stouter sheafs of correspondence
[Footnote: There remain also to be published a book on John Webster,
and a prose play in one act.--E.M.]--though I should add that the
hitherto unpublished letters enjoy the advantage of a commemorative and
interpretative commentary, at the Editor's hands, which will have
rendered the highest service to each matter. That even these four scant
volumes tell the whole story, or fix the whole image, of the fine young
spirit they are concerned with we certainly hold back from allowing; his
case being in an extraordinary degree that of a creature on whom the
gods had smiled their brightest, and half of whose manifestation
therefore was by the simple act of presence and of direct communication.
He did in fact specialise, to repeat my term; only since, as one reads
him, whether in verse or in prose, that distinguished readability seems