i6o CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
Byron ; he shrank and withered under the jeers and mocking looks of those who could not see his soul. Then the stung soul rebounded and strove with every ounce of will to make the mockers love him by doing good to them in strange new ways of overwhelming potency. But the explanation is neither clear nor wholly sufficient, sounds manufactured to fit facts beyond the vision of even the explainer. All we can say is that we get dim glimpses of a spiritual hell.
What is supremely interesting about Stephens is that he neither accepts this condition of things nor submits to it. Such a wretched frame for such a fierce vitality might easily have made another Leopardi, veiling all the light of heaven in black pessimism, cursing man and nature and God with cold irony for the vile mistake of his cre- ation. Stephens fights his ills, makes head against them, never lets himself be really prostrated by physical tor- ture or mental agony. Worsted for the moment, he forever reemerges, with some new refuge, some new comfort, some new device of cure.
One day he tries Burton's ** Anatomy of Melancholy," finds it excellent on homoeopathic principles, and recommends it to his brother, though Burton himself is inclined to advise all melancholy persons to shun his majestic folio.
More serious than such bookishness is the clear deter- mination to overcome mental misery by effort of will.
- ' I have in my life," he says, ** been one of the most
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