Other
honors quickly followed his successful essay, and he was chosen to
deliver an oration in the College Chapel just before the Christmas
vacation. This was in the year 1831. He selected as his subject the one
eminently congenial to his thought; and his theme, "The Influence of
Italian upon English Literature," was admirably treated. The oration is
before us as we write, and we turn the pages with a fond and loving eye.
We remember, as we read, his brief sojourn,--that he died "in the sweet
hour of prime,"--and we are astonished at the eloquent wisdom displayed
by a lad of twenty summers. "I cannot help considering," he says, "the
sonnets of Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the Genius of Christian
Europe, necessarily exacted, although voluntarily paid, before he was
allowed to take in hand the sceptre of his endless dominion." And he
ends his charming disquisition in these words;--"An English mind that
has drunk deep at the sources of Southern inspiration, and especially
that is imbued with the spirit of the mighty Florentine, will be
conscious of a perpetual freshness and quiet beauty resting on his
imagination and spreading gently over his affections, until, by the
blessing of Heaven, it may be absorbed without loss in the pure inner
light of which that voice has spoken, as no other can,--
"'Light intellectual, yet full of love,
Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,
Joy, every other sweetness far above.
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