of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid. He
habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as I then read,)
Terence, and, above all, the chaster poems of Catullus, not only with
the Roman poets of the, so called, silver and brazen ages; but with
even those of the Augustan aera: and, on grounds of plain sense and
universal logic, to see and assert the superiority of the former in
the truth and nativeness, both of their thoughts and diction. At the
same time that we were studying the Greek tragic poets, he made us
read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons; and they were lessons too,
which required most time and trouble to 'bring up' so as to escape his
censure. I learnt from him that Poetry, even that of the loftiest,
and, seemingly wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that
of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and
dependent on more, and more fugitive causes."

In early life he was remarkably joyous; nature had blessed him with a
buoyancy of spirits, and even when suffering, he deceived the partial
observer. He delighted many of the strangers he met in his saunterings
through the cloisters, arrested and riveted the attention of the passer
by, whom, like his "Ancient Mariner," he held by a spell. His
schoolfellow, Lamb, has mentioned him, when under the influence of this
power, as the delight of his auditors. In the Elia, he says,

"Come back into memory like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy
fancies, with hope, like a fiery column before thee, the dark pillar
not yet turned ... How have I seen the casual passer through the
cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration, (while he weighed
the disproportion between the 'speech' and the 'garb' of the
mirandula,) to hear thee unfold, in deep and sweet intonations, the
mysteries of Iamblichus [14] or Plotinus, (for even in those years