the down of the cheek - as you see sunshine playing
over a meadow? Look into it, and see what a variety of delicate blooms there
are! a multitude of flowerets twining into one tint! We may break our
colour-pots and strive after the line alone: that is palpable, and we can grasp
it; the other is impossible, and beyond us.« Which sentiment I here set down,
not on account of its worth (and I think it is contradicted - as well as
asserted - in more than one of the letters I subsequently had from Mr. Clive),
but it may serve to show the ardent and impulsive disposition of this youth, by
whom all beauties of art and nature, animate or inanimate (the former
especially), were welcomed with a gusto and delight whereof colder temperaments
are incapable. The view of a fine landscape, a fine picture, a handsome woman,
would make this harmless young sensualist tipsy with pleasure. He seemed to
derive an actual hilarity and intoxication as his eye drank in these sights; and
though it was his maxim that all dinners were good, and he could eat bread and
cheese and drink small beer with perfect good-humour, I believe that he found a
certain pleasure in a bottle of claret which most men's systems were incapable
of feeling.
    This spring-time of youth is the season of letter-writing. A lad in high
health and spirits, the blood running briskly in his young veins, and the world,
and life, and nature bright and welcome to him, looks out, perforce, for some
companion to whom he may impart his sense of the pleasure which he enjoys, and
which were not complete unless a friend were by to share it. I was the person
most convenient for the young fellow's purpose. He was pleased to confer upon me
the title of friend en titre, and confidant in particular; to endow the
confidant in question with a number of virtues and excellences which existed
very likely only in the lad's imagination; to lament that the confidant had no
sister whom he, Clive, might marry out of hand; and to make me a thousand simple
protests of affection and admiration, which are noted here as signs of the young
man's character, by no means as proofs of the goodness of mine. The books given
to the present biographer by his affectionate friend, Clive Newcome, still bear
on the title-pages the marks of that boyish hand and youthful fervour. He had a
copy of »Walter Lorraine,« bound and gilt with such