could have deprived him of even had it speculatively tried: whereby what
was it but his own image that he most saw reflected in other faces? It
would still have been there, it couldn't possibly have succeeded in not
being, even had he closed his eyes to it with elaborate tightness. The
only neglect must have been on his own side, where indeed it did take
form in that of as signal an opportunity to become "spoiled," probably,
as ever fell in a brilliant young man's way: so that to help out my
comprehension of the unsightly and unsavoury, sufficiently wondered at,
with which his muse repeatedly embraced the occasion to associate
herself, I take the thing for a declaration of the idea that he might
himself prevent the spoiling so far as possible. He could in fact
prevent nothing, the wave of his fortune and his favour continuing so to
carry him; which is doubtless one of the reasons why, through our
general sense that nothing could possibly not be of the last degree of
rightness in him, what would have been wrong in others, literally in any
creature but him, like for example "A Channel Passage" of his first
volume, simply puts on, while this particular muse stands anxiously by,
a kind of dignity of experiment quite consistent with our congratulating
her, at the same time, as soon as it is over. What was "A Channel
Passage" thus but a flourish marked with the sign of all his
flourishes, that of being a success and having fruition? Though it
performed the extraordinary feat of directing the contents of the poet's
stomach straight at the object of his displeasure, we feel that, by some
excellent grace, the object is not at all reached--too many things, and
most of all, too innocently enormous a cynicism, standing in the way and
themselves receiving the tribute; having in a word, impatient young
cynicism as they are, _that_ experience as well as various things.