and perhaps this may explain that he did not love nature the less but
that he prized companionship more. If nature pleased him he longed for
a friend to share his pleasure; if it appalled him he turned from it
with repugnance and fear.

Throughout his writings may be found the most earnest appreciation of
the joyousness and loveliness of a beautiful landscape, but as he would
share it intellectually with his readers so it was a necessity that he
could not seek it alone as an actuality. In his boyhood, in the full
glory of a perfect day, he loved to ramble through the woods and
meadows, and delighted in the azure tints of the far-away Berkshire
hills; and later in life he was keen to notice and admire the soft
harmonies of landscape, but with a change in weather or with the
approach of a storm the poet would be lost in the timidity and distrust
of a child.

Companionship with him meant cheerfulness. His horror of gloom and
darkness was almost morbid. From the tragedies of life he instinctively
shrank, and large as was his sympathy, and generous and genuine his
affection, he was often prompted to run from suffering and to betray
what must have been a constitutional terror of distress. He did not
hesitate to acknowledge this characteristic, and sought to atone for it
by writing the most tender and touching lines to those to whom he
believed he owed a gift of comfort and strength. His private letters to
friends in adversity or bereavement were beautiful in their simplicity
and honest and outspoken love, for he was not ashamed to let his friends
see how much he thought of them. And even if the emotional quality,
which asserts itself in the nervous and artistic temperament, made him
realize that he could not trust himself, that same quality gave him a
personality marvelous in its magnetism. Both as boy and man he made