" At the same date he says of an
accidental meeting: "It annihilated for a moment all the years between the
present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable
feeling, like a rising from the grave to me. Clare too was much
agitated--more in appearance than I was myself--for I could feel his heart
beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own
which made me think so. We were but five minutes together on the public
road, but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence that could be weighed
against them." They were "all that brothers should be but the name;" and
it is interesting to trace this relationship between the greatest genius
of the new time and the son of the statesman who, in the preceding age,
stands out serene and strong amid the swarm of turbulent rioters and
ranting orators by whom he was surrounded and reviled.
Before leaving Harrow the poet had passed through the experience of a
passion of another kind, with a result that unhappily coloured his life.
Accounts differ as to his first meeting with Mary Ann Chaworth, the
heiress of the family whose estates adjoined his own, and daughter of the
race that had held with his such varied relations.
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