He seemed,
indeed, to know very little of this one, and lived and moved altogether
in his own little province of art. A creature more unsullied by the
world it is impossible to conceive, and I often thought it a flaw in his
artistic character that he had not a harmless vice or two. It amused me
greatly at times to think that he was of our shrewd Yankee race; but,
after all, there could be no better token of his American origin than
this high aesthetic fever. The very heat of his devotion was a sign of
conversion; those born to European opportunity manage better to reconcile
enthusiasm with comfort. He had, moreover, all our native mistrust for
intellectual discretion, and our native relish for sonorous superlatives.
As a critic he was very much more generous than just, and his mildest
terms of approbation were "stupendous," "transcendent," and
"incomparable." The small change of admiration seemed to him no coin for
a gentleman to handle; and yet, frank as he was intellectually, he was
personally altogether a mystery. His professions, somehow, were all half-
professions, and his allusions to his work and circumstances left
something dimly ambiguous in the background.
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