and soon Patience knew the whole poem. He rejoiced
to hear that the heroic tale was popular in Italy;
and, bringing together his recollections of it, endeavoured
to give them an abridged form in rude prose, but he
had no memory for words. Roused by his vivid
impressions, he would call up a thousand mighty images
before his eyes. He would give utterance to them
in improvisations wherein his genius triumphed over
the uncouthness of his language, but he could never
repeat what he had once said. One would have
had to take it down from his dictation, and even that
would have been of no use to him; for, supposing he
had managed to read it, his memory, accustomed to
occupy itself solely with thoughts, had never been
able to retain any fragment whatever in its precise
words. And yet he was fond of quoting, and at
times his language was almost biblical. Beyond,
however, certain expressions that he loved, and a number
of short sentences that he found means to make his
own, he remembered nothing of the pages which had
been read to him so often, and he always listened
to them again with the same emotion as at first.
It was a veritable pleasure to watch the effect of
beautiful poetry on this powerful intellect.
Little by little the abbe, Edmee, and subsequently
I myself, managed to familiarize him with Homer and
Dante. He was so struck by the various incidents
in the Divine Comedy that he could give an
analysis of the poem from beginning to end, without
forgetting or misplacing the slightest detail in the
journey, the encounters, and the emotions of the poet.
There, however, his power ended. If he essayed
to repeat some of the phrases which had so charmed
him when they were read, he flung forth a mass of
metaphors and images which savoured of delirium.
This initiation into the wonders of poetry marked an
epoch in the life of Patience. In the realm of
fancy it supplied the action wanting to his real life.
In his magic mirror he beheld gigantic combats between
heroes ten cubits high; he understood love, which he
himself had never known; he fought, he loved, he conquered;
he enlightened nations, gave peace to the world, redressed
the wrongs of mankind, and raised up temples to the
mighty spirit of the universe. He saw in the starry
firmament all the gods of Olympus, the fathers of primitive
humanity. In the constellations he read the story
of the golden age, and of the ages of brass; in the
winter wind he heard the songs of Morven, and in the
storm-clouds he bowed to the ghosts of Fingal and Comala.
“Before I knew the poets,” he said towards the end of his life, “I was a man lacking in one of the senses. I could see plainly that this sense was necessary, since there were so many things calling for its operation. In my solitary walks at night I used to feel a strange uneasiness; I used to wonder why I could not sleep; why I should find such pleasure in gazing upon the stars that I could not tear myself from their presence; why my heart