The young man wrote without knowledge.

He had never felt the passions he painted, never been in the situations he described.
There was no originality in him, for there was no experience; it was exquisite mechanism, his verse,--nothing more.

It might well deceive him, for it could not but flatter his ear--and Tasso's silver march rang not more musically than did the chiming stanzas of Castruccio Cesarini.
The perusal of this poetry, and his conversation with the poet, threw Maltravers into a fit of deep musing.

"This poor Cesarini may warn me against myself!" thought he.

"Better hew wood and draw water than attach ourselves devotedly to an art in which we have not the capacity to excel....