"But his conviction, if here for a moment it discharges gall, is usually cheerful with the cheerfulness of health. Sometimes he consciously expounds it; oftener he leaves you to seek and find it, but always (I believe) you will find this happy hope in youth at the base of everything he writes.
"The next thing to be noted is that he does not hope in youth because it is a period of license and waywardness, but because it is a period of imagination—
"'Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun,'
"'Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun,'
"And because it therefore has a better chance of grasping what is Universal than has the prudential wisdom of age which contracts its eye to particulars and keeps it alert for social pitfalls—the kind of wisdom seen at its best (but its best never made a hero) in Bubb Doddington's verses:—
"'Love thy country, wish it well,
Not with too intense a care;
'Tis enough that, when it fell,
Thou its ruin didst not share.'
"'Love thy country, wish it well,
Not with too intense a care;
'Tis enough that, when it fell,
Thou its ruin didst not share.'
"Admirable caution! Now contrast it for a moment with, let us say, the silly quixotic figure of Horatius with the broken bridge behind him:—
"'Round turned he, as not deigning
Those craven ranks to see:
Nought spake he to Lars Porsena,
To Sextus nought spake he;
But he saw on Palatinus
The white porch of his home—'
"'Round turned he, as not deigning
Those craven ranks to see:
Nought spake he to Lars Porsena,
To Sextus nought spake he;
But he saw on Palatinus
The white porch of his home—'