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Clerval! Beloved friend! Even now it delights me to record your

words and to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently

deserving. He was a being formed in the "very poetry of nature."

His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the

sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent

affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous

nature that the worldly-minded teach us to look for only in the

imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to

satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which

others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour:-

--The sounding cataract Haunted him like a passion: the tall

rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours

and their forms, were then to him An appetite; a feeling, and a

love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied,

or any interest Unborrow'd from the eye.

[Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey".]