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TRELAWNY'S LETTERS 125
are his
literary characteristics. He read
Shakespeare and Shelley, and it is not clear
that he cared greatly for much besides ;
he liked Swinburne, and was profoundly
interested in Darwin. Late in life he discovered
Blake and was fascinated. What
Trelawny cared for in literature was Imagination,
the more sublime the better, while in life
he had a taste for Truth and Freedom. He
was always something of an oddity. He loathed
superstition, cant and snobbery and said so
in a way that gave much pain to the nicest
people. He was of that disconcerting sort
which, excelling in all that ordinary people
admire, admires, for its part, what they hate
the abnormal and distinguished. He was
a man of action who mistrusted common
fellow on the side of cranks :
sense, a good
the race has never been common and is now
almost extinct.