In the few years preceding his grand tour, and, still more, the earlier _Vivian Grey_, he was at a phase in his development when he was only just beginning to realise the true bent of his powers, of which he had from the first been conscious, but which had hitherto more or less perplexed and bewildered him. In _Alroy_ and _Contarini_ his tone is one of savage force as yet unchastened and unmellowed. The wild Arab is in them. All the over-mastering dreams of his youth claimed materialisation; his language went before his feelings, and strove to outrun them by vehement strokes of attitude. He thirsted for action, and yet drooped, restless and mortified. His circumstances were at war with his consuming ambitions. It was the discord of a peculiar fate and an unique organisation; the ferment of a ripe spirit cooped by unripe experience, of an as yet untempered vigour. The genius, as in the old legend, shrank and dwindled in the bottle, but soared with gigantic stature when the stopper was released. One must not take the personal touches in _Vivian_, _Alroy_, and _Contarini_ too literally. They are a blend of several factors and of various characters; and he himself in his age regretted that the last had been the task of immaturity. But from the main emphasis and the prevailing moods of the three together, thus much one may gather. “Why, what is life” (this from _Alroy_), “for meditation mingles ever with my passion?... Throw accidents to the dogs, and tear off the painted mask of false society! Here am I, a hero; with a mind that can devise all things, and a heart of superhuman daring, with youth, with vigour, with a glorious lineage ... and I am--nothing.” He was morbidly overdone, and he brooded and overdid his own morbidity. He had lived in “a private world and a public world,” and the two were still at variance. “I was,” he says extravagantly of a still earlier date, on the lips of “Contarini,” “in these days but a wild beast who thought himself a civilised human being;” and yet “I felt the conviction that literary creation was necessary to my existence.”--“What vanity in all the empty bustle of common life! It brings to me no gratification; on the contrary, degrading annoyance. It develops all the lowering attributes of my nature.” He was impatient, and yet he felt that “patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.” “Nothing is more fatal than to be seduced into composition by the first flutter of the imagination.” He had aspired to be a poet, and a poet in a new style befitting modern life. The failure of the _Revolutionary Epick_ disgusted him; yet how could he have expected it to succeed? even if it had been sold at a farthing, as in the case of Mr. Horne’s experiment, it would never have attracted the public, for it was a long essay in stilted verse.[176] He still aspired to influence and rule his fellow-men, but no path was clear. These moods were not to last. “Think of me as of some exotic bird which for a moment lost its way in thy