But it
strikes us as a little singular that one whose life was so full of moral
inconsistency, whose character is so contemptible in many ways, in some
we might almost say so revolting, should yet have exercised so deep and
lasting an influence, and on minds so various, should still be an object
of minute and earnest discussion,--that he should have had such vigor in
his intellectual loins as to have been the father of Chateaubriand,
Byron, Lamartine, George Sand, and many more in literature, in politics
of Jefferson and Thomas Paine,--that the spots he had haunted should draw
pilgrims so unlike as Gibbon and Napoleon, nay, should draw them still,
after the lapse of near a century. Surely there must have been a basis of
sincerity in this man seldom matched, if it can prevail against so many
reasons for repugnance, aversion, and even disgust. He could not have
been the mere sentimentalist and rhetorician for which the
rough-and-ready understanding would at first glance be inclined to
condemn him. In a certain sense he was both of these, but he was
something more. It will bring us a little nearer the point we are aiming
at if we quote one other and more recent English opinion of him.
Mr. Thomas Moore, returning pleasantly in a travelling-carriage from a
trip to Italy, in which he had never forgotten the poetical shop at home,
but had carefully noted down all the pretty images that occurred to him
for future use,--Mr.
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