His soul would have clung to church
architecture,--under which term may be included all the religious,
political, poetical, moral, and practical life of the Middle Ages. The
accident in the case, however, was, that his uncle's library did not
contain the Greeks, nor the Middle Ages, but did contain the old English
authors. These he mastered; and out of these he created his ideals. In
the affluent vigor of the Elizabethan age, in the buoyant _neglige_ of
the times of merry Charles, he found people that he liked. To every
reflective and slightly scholastic mind, there is a charm in looking
at things in the distance. The perspective fits the eye. This may have
helped the enthusiasm with which he looked upon the writers and heroes
of the old English literature; but its principal cause was their
open-heartedness, their informality, their stout and free humanity
underneath laces and uniform.
Having thus found his place in literature, he began also to be rich in
friends, and his life was devoted every moment to thought and affection.
The time that he passed at the desk of the India House was time in which
he did not live; or perhaps, while he autographed the mercantile books,
there was a higher half-conscious life of the fancy which lightly
flitted round and round the steady course of his pen.
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