Next to Charles Lamb, but at a convenable distance, Izaak
Walton was Tom Folio's favorite. His poet was Alexander Pope, though
he thought Mr. Addison's tragedy of "Cato" contained some proper
good lines. Our friend was a wide reader in English classics, greatly
preferring the literature of the earlier periods to that of the
Victorian age. His smiling, tenderly expressed disapprobation of various
modern authors was enchanting. John Keats's verses were monstrous
pretty, but over-ornamented. A little too much lucent syrup tinct
with cinnamon, don't you think? The poetry of Shelley might have been
composed in the moon by a slightly deranged, well-meaning person. If you
wanted a sound mind in a sound metrical body, why there was Mr. Pope's
"Essay on Man." There was something winsome and by-gone in the general
make-up of Tom Folio. No man living in the world ever seemed to me to
live so much out of it, or to live more comfortably.
At times I half suspected him of a convalescent amatory disappointment.
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