There was much of this
intrinsic quality in the affection of Henry and Ned also, but it was
much more to be accounted for by evident mutual sympathies. It was
largely the impassioned fellowship of two craftsmen in love with the
same art. Both had their literary ambitions; but, irrespective of those,
they both loved poetry. Yes, how they loved it! Ned was perhaps
particularly a born appreciator; and it was worth seeing how the tears
would come into his fine eyes, as his voice shook with tenderness over a
fine phrase or a noble passage. They had discovered some of the most
thrilling things in English literature together, at that impressionable
age when such things mean most to us. Together they had read Keats for
the first wonderful time; together learned Shakespeare's Sonnets by
heart; together rolled out over tavern-tables the sumptuous cadences of
De Quincey. Wonderful indeed, and never to be forgotten, were those
evenings when, the day at last over, they would leave their offices
behind them, and, while the sunset was turning the buildings of Tyre
into enchanted towers, and a clemency of release breathed upon its
streets, steal to the quiet corner of their favourite tavern; to drink
port and share their last new author, or their own latest rhymes, and
then to emerge again, with high calm hearts and eloquent eyes, beneath
the splendid stars.
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