Scott[1] and Goethe's Faust; Victor Hugo and Chateaubriand made a great impression upon him. It does not, however, appear that he ever underwent the fascination that romanticism exercised upon the young of his day. He always indeed retained a secret distaste for that touch of the morbid and fevered which belonged to some of the most attractive and most beloved of the romantic writers, such as Musset. "Musset gives one a fever," he said at a later time to his friend Marolle. "It is the only thing he can do. His is a charming, fanciful, deeply poisoned mind; he can only disenchant, deprive of hope or corrupt. The fever passes and leaves one enfeebled, like a man recovering from illness who needs fresh air, sunshine and stars." For his part he returned to the fresh air and the sunshine of the Bible, Homer and Virgil. To these he added Theocritus, with whom he was delighted and whom, according to Piédagnel, he came at last to prefer to his dear Virgil; then Dante and Milton, some of whose lines awoke a deep
- ↑ On reading Scott again at a later time he perceived that he no longer found any pleasure in his works.
41
