He must have been known to me earlier, but I remember him first as he swam vividly3 into my ken4, with a volume of Macaulay’s essays in his hand, one day. Less figuratively speaking, he came up into the printing-office to expose from the book the nefarious5 plagiarism6 of an editor in a neighboring city, who had adapted with the change of names and a word or two here and there, whole passages from the essay on Barere, to the denunciation of a brother editor. It was a very simple-hearted fraud, and it was all done with an innocent trust in the popular ignorance which now seems to me a little pathetic; but it was certainly very barefaced7, and merited the public punishment which the discoverer inflicted8 by means of what journalists call the deadly parallel column. The effect ought logically to have been ruinous for the plagiarist9, but it was really nothing of the kind. He simply ignored the exposure, and the comments of the other city papers, and in the process of time he easily lived down the memory of it and went on to greater usefulness in his profession.
But for the moment it appeared to me a tremendous crisis, and I listened as the minister of justice read his communication, with a thrill which lost itself in the interest I suddenly felt in the plundered10 author. Those facile and brilliant phrases and ideas struck me as the finest things I had yet known in literature, and I borrowed the book and read it through. Then I borrowed another volume of Macaulay’s essays, and another and another, till I had read them every one. It was like a long debauch11, from which I emerged with regret that it should ever end.
I tried other essayists, other critics, whom the machinist had in his library, but it was useless; neither Sidney Smith nor Thomas Carlyle could console me; I sighed for more Macaulay and evermore Macaulay. I read his History of England, and I could measurably console myself with that, but only measurably; and I could not go back to the essays and read them again, for it seemed to me I had absorbed them so thoroughly12 that I had left nothing unenjoyed in them. I used to talk with the machinist about them, and with the organ-builder, and with my friend the printer, but no one seemed to feel the intense fascination13 in them that I did, and that I should now be quite unable to account for.
Once more I had an author for whom I could feel a personal devotion, whom I could dream of and dote upon, and whom I could offer my intimacy14 in many an impassioned revery. I do not think T. B. Macaulay would really have liked it; I dare say he would not have valued the friendship of the sort of a youth I was, but in the conditions he was helpless, and I poured out my love upon him without a rebuff. Of course I reformed my prose style, which had been carefully modelled upon that of Goldsmith and Irving, and began to write in the manner of Macaulay, in short, quick sentences, and with the prevalent use of brief Anglo–Saxon words, which he prescribed, but did not practise. As for his notions of literature, I simply accepted them with the feeling that any question of them would have been little better than blasphemy16.
For a long time he spoiled my taste for any other criticism; he made it seem pale, and poor, and weak; and he blunted my sense to subtler excellences17 than I found in him. I think this was a pity, but it was a thing not to be helped, like a great many things that happen to our hurt in life; it was simply inevitable18. How or when my frenzy19 for him began to abate20 I cannot say, but it certainly waned21, and it must have waned rapidly, for after no great while I found myself feeling the charm of quite different minds, as fully15 as if his had never enslaved me. I cannot regret that I enjoyed him so keenly as I did; it was in a way a generous delight, and though he swayed me helplessly whatever way he thought, I do not think yet that he swayed me in any very wrong way. He was a bright and clear intelligence, and if his light did not go far, it is to be said of him that his worst fault was only to have stopped short of the finest truth in art, in morals, in politics.
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1 agile | |
adj.敏捷的,灵活的 | |
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2 vice | |
n.坏事;恶习;[pl.]台钳,老虎钳;adj.副的 | |
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3 vividly | |
adv.清楚地,鲜明地,生动地 | |
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4 ken | |
n.视野,知识领域 | |
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5 nefarious | |
adj.恶毒的,极坏的 | |
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6 plagiarism | |
n.剽窃,抄袭 | |
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7 barefaced | |
adj.厚颜无耻的,公然的 | |
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8 inflicted | |
把…强加给,使承受,遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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9 plagiarist | |
n.剽窃者,文抄公 | |
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10 plundered | |
掠夺,抢劫( plunder的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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11 debauch | |
v.使堕落,放纵 | |
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12 thoroughly | |
adv.完全地,彻底地,十足地 | |
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13 fascination | |
n.令人着迷的事物,魅力,迷恋 | |
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14 intimacy | |
n.熟悉,亲密,密切关系,亲昵的言行 | |
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15 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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16 blasphemy | |
n.亵渎,渎神 | |
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17 excellences | |
n.卓越( excellence的名词复数 );(只用于所修饰的名词后)杰出的;卓越的;出类拔萃的 | |
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18 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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19 frenzy | |
n.疯狂,狂热,极度的激动 | |
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20 abate | |
vi.(风势,疼痛等)减弱,减轻,减退 | |
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21 waned | |
v.衰落( wane的过去式和过去分词 );(月)亏;变小;变暗淡 | |
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