prings were touched. The hardening power in his
composition, though fugitive and comparatively seldom displayed, was in
fact proportioned to his tenderness; and no one who had not seen him
in the revulsion from a hard mood, or the regret for it, knew what that
tenderness could be.

Underlying all the peculiarities of his nature, its strength and its
weakness, its exuberance and its reserves, was the nervous excitability
of which I have spoken in an earlier chapter. I have heard him say:
'I am nervous to such a degree that I might fancy I could not enter a
drawing-room, if I did not know from long experience that I can do it.'
He did not desire to conceal this fact, nor need others conceal it for
him; since it was only calculated to disarm criticism and to
strengthen sympathy. The special vital power which he derived from this
organization need not be reaffirmed. It carried also its inevitable
disablements. Its resources were not always under his own control; and
he frequently complained of the lack of presence of mind which would
seize him on any conventional emergency not included in the daily social
routine. In a real one he was never at fault. He never failed in a
sympathetic response or a playful retort; he was always provided with
the exact counter requisite in a game of words. In this respect indeed
he had all the powers of the conversationalist; and the perfect ease and
grace and geniality of his manner on such occasions, arose probably
far more from his innate human and social qualities than from even his
familiar intercourse with the world. But he could not extemporize a
speech. He could not on the spur of the moment string together the
more or less set phrases which an after-dinner oration demands. All his
friends knew this, and spared him the necessity of refusing. He had
once a headache all day, because at a dinner, the night before, a false
report had reached him that he was going to be asked to speak. This
alone would have sufficed to prevent him from accepting any public
post. He confesses the disability in a pretty note to Professor Knight,
written in reference to a recent meeting of the Wordsworth Society.

19, Warwick Crescent, W.: May 9, '84.

My dear Professor Knight,--I seem ungracious and ungrateful, but am
neither; though, now that your festival is over, I wish I could have
overcome my scruples and apprehensions. It is hard to say--when kind
people press one to 'just speak for a minute'--that