As faithful reflections of his
character at that period of life, they enable us to judge of what he
was in his yet unadulterated state,--before disappointment had begun
to embitter his ardent spirit, or the stirring up of the energies of
his nature had brought into activity also its defects. Tracing him
thus through these natural effusions of his young genius, we find him
pictured exactly such, in all the features of his character, as every
anecdote of his boyish days proves him really to have been, proud,
daring, and passionate,--resentful of slight or injustice, but still
more so in the cause of others than in his own; and yet, with all this
vehemence, docile and placable, at the least touch of a hand
authorised by love to guide him. The affectionateness, indeed, of his
disposition, traceable as it is through every page of this volume, is
yet but faintly done justice to, even by himself;--his whole youth
being, from earliest childhood, a series of the most passionate
attachments,--of those overflowings of the soul, both in friendship
and love, which are still more rarely responded to than felt, and
which, when checked or sent back upon the heart, are sure to turn into
bitterness. We have seen also, in some of his early unpublished poems,
how apparent, even through the doubts that already clouded them, are
those feelings of piety which a soul like his could not but possess,
and which, when afterwards diverted out of their legitimate channel,
found a vent in the poetical worship of nature, and in that shadowy
substitute for religion which superstition offers.
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