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ii6 TRELAWNY'S LETTERS
one could name as having lived through so
large a part of it." We agree heartily
of course, there is more to be said for
instance, that Trelawny sometimes reminds us
of an extraordinarily intelligent schoolboy,
; but,
at others of a rather morbid minor poet.
Only, the vitality of few schoolboys amounts
almost to genius, and minor poets are not
always blest with feelings fundamentally
sound. Most of his vices were the defects of
good qualities. A powerful imagination may
be fairly held accountable for his habit of
romancing, and a brave vocabulary for some
of his exaggeration. His vanity and violence
as childish as his love of mystery, and often
as childishly displayed were forms in which
his high spirits and passionate nature expressed
themselves. Art, in the shape of a bad education,
aggravated his faults ; but his honesty
and imagination, his generosity and childlike
capacity for admiration and affection were
from nature alone. He was a schoolboy who
never grew up ; cultivating his cabbages at
Worthing in 1875, he is essentially the same
shrewd, passionate, romantic scapegrace who
deserted his ship in Bombay harbour soon
after the battle of Trafalgar, and burnt
Shelley's body on the foreshore at Via Reggio.
Like all boys, Trelawny was exceedingly
impressionable, and at the beginning of this