At just 15 he fibs his way into the army, and soon sees action at the Battle of Waterloo. For the remainder of his life this becomes his golden ticket: “The great revelation — Waterloo,” Boyd writes when Cashel starts meeting the Romantic poets in Italy. In prison, Cashel meets a working-class utopian who persuades him to take over a farm in Massachusetts. In this second half of Cashel’s life Boyd carefully lets us witness the hazards of Romanticism, including its practitioners’ susceptibility to selfishness. “He thought again of this pattern he had discerned in his personal history,” Boyd writes.

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Persons: Cashel Greville, Ross, Cashel, Waterloo, ” Boyd, “, Shelley, he’s, Dickens, Boyd, Raphaella Organizations: America Locations: County Cork, Ireland, Waterloo, Italy, Cashel, Massachusetts, Africa, Venice