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Updated: May 12, 2025
The human mind, where it is accustomed to act freely, must be impelled by some master-passion; and when true religion does not supply it, error stands ready to satisfy the demand.
The master-passion of this worthy and genial fellow was to get a publisher for a fair commentary on Dante, to which he had firmly linked a very bad translation, and for about six months Byron pesters Murray with constant appeals to satisfy him; e.g. November l6, "He must be gratified, though the reviewers will make him suffer more tortures than there are in his original."
I recall few instances of others so distinguished in station who possessed this power, which has its root, perhaps, after all, in the great master-passion of mortality, the yearning for exalted sympathy, so seldom accorded. This observation of mine was but a glimpse at best, for the winding of the stage-horn was the signal for Mr. Calhoun's departure, and I never saw him more.
Apparently no one replaced him, for she never married, but grew stoutish, grayish, philanthropic yet how sweet she had been when he had first kissed her! One more wasted life, he reflected... But the stage had always been his master-passion. He would have sold his soul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was IN HIM he could not remember when it had not been his deepest-seated instinct.
A man is vexed, the nerve of his equanimity thrillingly touched at the tender elbow, and forthwith his whole wholesome body writhes in pain; while, to speak morally, those useful reminders of life's frailty, the habitual side-thorns spurs of diligence, incentives to better things are exaggerated into sixfold spears, and terribly stop the way, like long-lanced Achæans: a careless fit succeeds to one of spleen, and vanity well spangled, pretty baubles, stars and trinkets and trifles, fill their cycle, to magnetize with folly that rolling world the brain: another twist, and love is lord paramount, a paltry bit of glass, casually rose-coloured, shedding its warm blush over all the reflective powers: suddenly an overcast, for that marplot, Disappointment, has obtruded a most vexatiously reiterated morsel of lamp-black: again Hope's little bit of blue paint makes azure rainbows all about the firmament of man's own inner world; and at last an atom of gold-dust specks all the glasses with its lurid yellow, and haply leaves the old miser to his master-passion.
What! that deep emotion agitating my whole being, whose language was the tears of joy that dimmed my eyes, and the counted beatings of my throbbing heart that master-passion, at whose behest I trembled while blushes mantled and fled from my cheek, betraying me to him and him to me; the love whose fire I could not hide the beautiful future I foresaw that world of bliss in which I began to live this pure love that gave an impetus to life this devotion that I felt was reciprocated.... All, all was but a creation of my fancy.... and all has vanished ... here I am alone with nothing to strengthen me but a memory ... the memory of a lost illusion.... Have I a right to complain?
But his master-passion was soon to assert itself, and, as in all such cases, in an unexpected manner. Millet's attempts at drawing had hitherto been confined to studies made in hours stolen from rest.
She craved a roomy stage for her drama, and obviously there was only one method of obtaining it, and even that method was but dubious. But Hadria had undermined this matter of fact, take-things-as-you-find-them view, and set her sister's pride on the track. That master-passion once aroused in the new direction, Algitha was ready to defend her dignity as a woman, and as a human being, to the death.
If we go on to cast a look at the fate of these world-historical persons, whose vocation it was to be the agents of the World-Spirit, we shall find it to have been no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was labor and trouble; their whole nature was naught else but their master-passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty husks from the kernel.
His past existence had disciplined him to bear disaster and insult, as few happier men could have borne them; but it had not prepared him to feel the master-passion of humanity, for the first time, at the dreary end of his life, in the hopeless decay of a manhood that had withered under the double blight of conjugal disappointment and parental sorrow.
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