And he had conceived (and not altogether ill)
a vision, in which, wandering along some bright Italian bay, he met
Dolcino sitting, a spirit at rest but not yet glorified, waiting for
the revival of that dead land for which he had died; and Margaret
by him, dipping her scorched feet for ever in the cooling wave, and
looking up to the hero for whom she had given up all, with eyes of
everlasting love. There they were to prophesy to him such things as
seemed fit to him, of the future of Italy and of Europe, of the
doom of priests and tyrants, of the sorrows and rewards of genius
unappreciated and before its age; for Elsley's secret vanity could
see in himself a far greater likeness to Dolcino, than Dolcino--the
preacher, confessor, bender of all hearts, man of the world and man
of action, at last crafty and all but unconquerable guerilla
warrior--would ever have acknowledged in the self-indulgent dreamer.
However, it was a fair conception enough; though perhaps it never
would have entered Elsley's head, had Shelley never written the
opening canto of the Revolt of Islam.
So Elsley, on a burning July forenoon, strolled up the lane and over
the down to King Arthur's Nose, that he might find materials for his
sea-shore scene. For he was not one of those men who live in such
quiet, everyday communication with nature, that they drink in her
various aspects as unconsciously as the air they breathe; and so can
reproduce them, out of an inexhaustible stock of details, simply and
accurately, and yet freshly too, tinged by the peculiar hue of the
mind in which they have been long sleeping.
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