THE RANDALL FAMILY /I
day evening came ; and this continued winter after winter. In his desire to have something written to read to me at our expected Saturday night sessions lay the origin of "The Consolations of Solitude," "The Metamorphoses of Longing," and other poems.
In 1855, I entered college, our regular sessions were broken up, and loss of the old stimulus proved practically the end of his effort to produce ; for, while he was more keenly alive than most men to the pleasures of intellectual sympathy grounded in congeniality of nature, he enter- tained for fame, whether present or posthumous, a most genuine and undisguised contempt. More sincere in this than Carlyle, who praised the virtue of "Silence" with the voice of Stentor, Randall never wrote a word for the sake of reputation. If he published a few poems in 1856, it was to please a boy-friend who entreated him not to bury his talent in a napkin ; all the rest he left lying in manu- script, utterly indifferent to their fate. If now, through the same friend no longer a boy, a few more of these are rescued from oblivion, it is only because that friend, in 1 89 1, begged the privilege of saving for mankind what would else have gone to the rubbish-heap. What he wrote in "The Poet: First Treatment" was absolutely true of one man, at least, out of the many millions of our vain and plaudit-loving race : —
" What though the scorn of senseless pride
Disdain thy poor and humble lot, Though fools thy sacred songs deride,
Nay, though by all mankind forgot? Yon tuneful thrush no witness wants,
When his wild carols charm the glade ; If steps profane invade his haunts,
He wings his way to deeper shade, Where, all unseen within the gloomy wood, His plaintive song delights the savage solitude."
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