He wrote to an author, the first part of whose
story he had seen with sympathy, hoping that it might continue in
the same vein. 'That this may be so,' he wrote, 'I long with the
longing of David for the water of Bethlehem. But no man need die
for the water a poet can give, and all can drink it to the end of
time, and their thirst be quenched and the pool never dry - and the
thirst and the water are both blessed.' It was in the Greeks
particularly that he found this blessed water; he loved 'a fresh
air' which he found 'about the Greek things even in translations';
he loved their freedom from the mawkish and the rancid. The tale
of David in the Bible, the ODYSSEY, Sophocles, AEschylus,
Shakespeare, Scott; old Dumas in his chivalrous note; Dickens
rather than Thackeray, and the TALE OF TWO CITIES out of Dickens:
such were some of his preferences. To Ariosto and Boccaccio he was
always faithful; BURNT NJAL was a late favourite; and he found at
least a passing entertainment in the ARCADIA and the GRAND CYRUS.
George Eliot he outgrew, finding her latterly only sawdust in the
mouth; but her influence, while it lasted, was great, and must have
gone some way to form his mind.
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