While at Eton, he was reckoned, according
to the usual test at that place, not a first-rate Latin student, for his
mind had a predominant bias toward English literature, and there he
lingered among the exhaustless fountains of the earlier poetry of his
native tongue. One who knew him well in those years has described him to
us as a sweet-voiced lad, moving about the pleasant playing-fields of
Eton with a thoughtful eye and a most kindly expression. Afterwards, as
Tennyson, singing to the witch-elms and the towering sycamore, paints
him, he mixed in all the simple sports, and loved to gather a happy
group about him, as he lay on the grass and discussed grave questions of
state. And again,--
"Thy converse drew us with delight,
The men of rathe and riper years:
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight."
His taste for philosophical poetry increased with his years, and
Wordsworth and Shelley became his prime favorites. His contributions to
the "Eton Miscellany" were various, sometimes in prose and now and then
in verse. A poet by nature, he could not resist the Muse's influence,
and he expressed a genuine emotion, oftentimes elegantly, and never
without a meaning.
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