amily necessarily saw but little of him. He could not,
however he might wish it, join the summer evening walk, or make one of
the circle round the winter hearth, or even spare time for conversation
after the family meals (except during the brief space I have just been
speaking of). Every day, every hour had its allotted employment; always
were there engagements to publishers imperatively requiring punctual
fulfillment; always the current expenses of a large household to take
anxious thoughts for: he had no crops growing while he was idle. "My
ways," he used to say, "are as broad as the king's high road, and my
means lie in an ink-stand."

Yet, notwithstanding the value which every moment of his time thus
necessarily bore, unlike most literary men, he was never ruffled in the
slightest degree by the interruptions of his family, even on the most
trivial occasions; the book or the pen was ever laid down with a smile,
and he was ready to answer any question, or to enter with youthful
readiness into any temporary topic of amusement or interest.

In earlier years he spoke of himself as ill calculated for general
society, from a habit of uttering single significant sentences, which,
from being delivered without any qualifying clauses, bore more meaning
upon their surface than he intended, and through which his real opinions
and feelings were often misunderstood. This habit, as far as my own
observation went, though it was sometimes apparent, he had materially
checked in later life, and in large parties he was usually inclined to
be silent, rarely joining in general conversation. But he was very
different when with only one or two companions; and to those strangers,
who came to him with letters of introduction, he was both extremely
courteous in manner, and frank and pleasant in conversation, and to his
intimates no one could have been more wholly unreserved, more disposed
to give and receive pleasure, or more ready to pour forth his vast
stores of information upon almost every subject.

I might go on here, and enter more at length into details of his
personal character, but the task is too difficult a one, and is perhaps,
after all, better left unattempted. A most intimate and highly-valued
friend of my father's, whom I wished to have supplied me with some
passages on these points, remarks very justly, that "any portraiture of
him, by the pen as by the pencil, will fall so far short both of the
truth and the ideal which the