It would, indeed, be difficult for sculptor or painter to
imagine a subject of more fearful beauty than the fine countenance of
the young poet must have exhibited in the collected energy of that
crisis. His pride had been wounded to the quick, and his ambition
humbled;--but this feeling of humiliation lasted but for a moment. The
very re-action of his spirit against aggression roused him to a full
consciousness of his own powers;[90] and the pain and the shame of the
injury were forgotten in the proud certainty of revenge.
Among the less sentimental effects of this review upon his mind, he
used to mention that, on the day he read it, he drank three bottles of
claret to his own share after dinner;--that nothing, however, relieved
him till he had given vent to his indignation in rhyme, and that
"after the first twenty lines, he felt himself considerably better."
His chief care, indeed, afterwards, was amiably devoted,--as we have
seen it was, in like manner, _before_ the criticism,--to allaying,
as far as he could, the sensitiveness of his mother; who, not having
the same motive or power to summon up a spirit of resistance, was, of
course, more helplessly alive to this attack upon his fame, and felt
it far more than, after the first burst of indignation, he did
himself. But the state of his mind upon the subject will be best
understood from the following letter.
LETTER 25.
TO MR. BECKER.
"Dorant's, March 28.
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