When he indulges in doubt
and sarcasm, and speaks contemptuously of things in general, he does it,
partly, no doubt, out of actual dissatisfaction, but more perhaps than
he suspects, out of a fear of being thought weak and sensitive--which is
a blind that the best men very commonly practise. Mr. Campbell professes
to be hopeless and sarcastic, and takes pains all the while to set up an
university.
"When I first saw this eminent person, he gave me the idea of a French
Virgil: not that he is like a Frenchman, much less the French translator
of Virgil. I found him as handsome as the Abbe Delille is said to have
been ugly. But he seemed to me to embody a Frenchman's ideal notion of
the Latin poet; something a little more cut and dry than I had looked
for; compact and elegant, critical and acute, with a consciousness of
authorship upon him; a taste over-anxious not to commit itself, and
refining and diminishing nature as in a drawing-room mirror. This fancy
was strengthened in the course of conversation, by his expatiating on
the greatness of Racine. I think he had a volume of the French Tragedian
in his hand. His skull was sharply cut and fine; with plenty, according
to the phrenologists, both of the reflective and amative organs; and his
poetry will bear them out.
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