He considered that he had inherited the
hard-won gains of the rationalists. But he came to London and found
young men feebly playing with the fire of that Romanism which he
regarded as at once the most childish and the most dangerous of all
intellectual obsessions. In an age of great biologists and electricians,
he came upon children prettily talking about fairies and the
philosopher's stone. In one of the greatest ages of English poetry, he
came to London to find young English poets falling on their knees to the
metrical mathematicians of France. In the great age of democracy, a fool
had come and asked him if he were not a supporter of the house of
Stuart, a Jacobite of charades. But only once had he heard the name of
Milton; it was the learned boy of fifteen who had quoted him,--a
lifelong debt of gratitude; and never once had he heard the voice of
simple human feeling, nor heard one speak of beauty, simply,
passionately, with his heart in his mouth; nor of love with his heart
upon his sleeve. Much cleverness, much learning, much charm, there had
been, but he had missed the generous human impulse.
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