cold heaven, but has now regained its course and wings its flight to a more brilliant earth, and a brighter sky.” Moreover, he had for some years fostered the idea that verse was obsolete for poetry, and that rhyme was a solecism. Poetry should be the revelation of nature, and yet it had sought a modern vent in unnatural language.[177] He attempted, therefore, to frame a language for poetical expression on a plan of his own, at once rhythmical and theatrical. And for all his confidence he was not wholly at ease. “I observed that I was the slave of custom, and never viewed any particular incident in relation to men in general.... I deeply felt that there was a total want of nature in everything connected with me.”--“When I look back on myself at this period, I have difficulty in conceiving a more unamiable character.” And yet instinct revolted against artificiality. In defiance he would air his most extreme passions. To veil them was cant. “Never apologise for showing feeling.... Remember that when you do so, you apologise for truth.” But if something of all this is applicable to 1829, still more is applicable to three years earlier, when _Vivian Grey_--a miracle, whatever its defects, for one barely out of his nonage--was published;[178] and much of the phase was only a remnant of its aggravated form in 1826. He had been seriously and mysteriously ill. He had small acquaintance with the great world, and continual conversance with his visions of it. He was in doubt, even in despair. His family was astonished, even annoyed. In _Contarini_, where his first novel figures as “Manstein,” he has himself told us what he regretted in _Vivian Grey_. It was “written in a storm and without any reflection;” its few images were all “probably copied from books.”--“I thought of ‘Manstein’ as of a picture painted by a madman in the dark.”--“I determined to re-educate myself.” Years afterwards, when these fleeting phases had long passed, and had been succeeded by the higher and healthier moods following on the discovery and pursuit of his true destiny, he apologised for _Vivian Grey_ as a boyish freak, affected because not written from observation of the world, and he added that every one has a right to be conceited until he is successful. He showed his opinion of it by publishing _Contarini_ anonymously. In his old age, he excused its “inevitable reappearance” by once remarking that first efforts dealing with a big but unknown world must be exaggerated in style, and that “false taste accompanies exaggeration.” Had he been grandiose without afterwards proving himself great, the blame would have been deserved.