Though I had learned the piece in my reading-book at school, I came into the world a little too late on the one hand—­and I daresay a little too early on the other—­to think much of Byron; and the sonorous verse, prodigiously well delivered, struck me with surprise.

“You are fond of poetry, too?” I asked.

“I am a great reader,” he replied.  “At one time I had begun to amass quite a small but well selected library; and when that was scattered, I still managed to preserve a few volumes—­chiefly of pieces designed for recitation—­which have been my travelling companions.”

“Is that one of them?” I asked, pointing to the volume in his hand.

“No, sir,” he replied, showing me a translation of the Sorrows of Werther, “that is a novel I picked up some time ago.  It has afforded me great pleasure, though immoral.”

“O, immoral!” cried I, indignant as usual at any complication of art and ethics.

“Surely you cannot deny that, sir—­if you know the book,” he said.  “The passion is illicit, although certainly drawn with a good deal of pathos.  It is not a work one could possibly put into the hands of a lady; which is to be regretted on all accounts, for I do not know how it may strike you; but it seems to me—­as a depiction, if I make myself clear—­to rise high above its compeers—­even famous compeers.  Even in Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, or Hawthorne, the sentiment of love appears to me to be frequently done less justice to.”

“You are expressing a very general opinion,” said I.

“Is that so, indeed, sir?” he exclaimed, with unmistakable excitement.  “Is the book well known? and who was GO-EATH?  I am interested in that, because upon the title-page the usual initials are omitted, and it runs simply ‘by GO-EATH.’  Was he an author of distinction?  Has he written other works?”

Such was our first interview, the first of many; and in all he showed the same attractive qualities and defects.  His taste for literature was native and unaffected; his sentimentality, although extreme and a thought ridiculous, was plainly genuine.  I wondered at my own innocent wonder.  I knew that Homer nodded, that Caesar had compiled a jest-book, that Turner lived by preference the life of Puggy Booth, that Shelley made paper boats, and Wordsworth wore green spectacles! and with all this mass of evidence before me, I had expected Bellairs to be entirely of one piece, subdued to what he worked in, a spy all through.  As I abominated the man’s trade, so I had expected to detest the man himself; and behold, I liked him.  Poor devil! he was essentially a man on wires, all sensibility and tremor, brimful of a cheap poetry, not without parts, quite without courage.  His boldness was despair; the gulf behind him thrust him on; he was one of those who might commit a murder rather than confess the theft of a postage-stamp.  I was sure that his coming interview with Carthew rode his imagination like a nightmare; when the thought