y professed. To the misgoverned, misguided, splendidly reckless
boyhood and early manhood of Fox Pitt opposed the gravity and stillness
of his youth. The exuberant animal vitality of Fox, wasting itself
overlong in the flame of aimless passions, was emphasized by the solid
reserve, the passionless austerity of Pitt. The one man was compact of
all the heady enthusiasms, the splendid generosities of a nature rich
in the vitality that sought eagerly new outlets for its energy, that
played hard as it worked hard, that exulted in extremes. The other
moved in a narrow path to one envisaged aim, and, conscious of a
certain physical frailty, husbanded his resources, limited the scope of
his fine intellect, and acted not indeed along the line of least
resistance but within lines of purpose that were not very far apart.
The one explored the mountain and the valley, lingered in gardens and
orchards, or wandered at all adventure upon desolate heaths; the other
pursued in patience the white highway to his goal, untempted or at
least unconquered by allurements that could prove irresistible to his
adversary.

[Sidenote: 1780--The character of the younger Pitt]

The two men differed as much in appearance as in mind. The outer
seeming of each is almost as familiar as the forms and faces of
contemporaries. Fox was massively {213} corpulent, furiously untidy, a
heroic sloven, his bull throat and cheeks too often black with a three
days' beard, infinitely lovable, exquisitely cultured, capable of the
noblest tenderness, yet with a kind of grossness sometimes that was but
a part, and perhaps an inevitable part, of his wide humanity. Pitt was
slender, boyish, precise, punctilious in attire, his native composure
only occasionally lightened by a flash of humor or sweetened by a show
of playfulness, old beyond his years and young to the end of his short
life, sternly self-restrained and self-commanded, gracious in a kind of
melancholy, unconscious charm, a curiously unadorned, uncolored
personality, that attracted where it did attract with a magnetism that
was perhaps all the more potent for being somewhat difficult to
explain. Fox was always a lover in many kinds of love, fugitive,
venal, illicit, honorable, and enduring. Pitt carried himself through
temptations with a monastic rigor. There was a time when his friends
implored him for the sake of appearances, and not to flout too
flagrantly the manners of the time, to show himself i