28
SHIRLEY.
for the sake of having the privilege of comforting him."
"You never would have loved Cowper," rejoined Caroline, promptly: "he was not made to be loved by woman."
"What do you mean?"
"What I say. I know there is a kind of natures in the world—and very noble, elevated natures, too—whom love never comes near. You might have sought Cowper with the intention of loving him; and you would have looked at him, pitied him, and left him: forced away by a sense of the impossible, the incongruous, as the crew were borne from their drowning comrade by 'the furious blast.'"
"You may be right. Who told you this?"
"And what I say of Cowper, I should say of Rousseau. Was Rousseau ever loved? He loved passionately; but was his passion ever returned? I am certain, never. And if there were any female Cowpers and Rousseaus, I should assert the same of them."
"Who told you this, I ask? Did Moore?"
"Why should anybody have told me? Have I not an instinct? Can I not divine by analogy? Moore never talked to me either about Cowper, or Rousseau, or love. The voice we hear in solitude told me all I know on these subjects."
"Do you like characters of the Rousseau order, Caroline?"