which illustrates his great kindness and amiability, his _sweetness_
of temper and disposition.

I met him at Miss Berry's at dinner, a few days before he began his
course of lectures on the English essayists, and he asked me to come
and hear him, and told me he was so nervous about it, that he was
afraid he should break down.

I had an engagement which prevented my hearing his first lecture,
but I promised him to go and see him at his room before he began it,
to cheer him.

He was to lecture at Willis Rooms, in the same room where I read,
and going thither before the time for his beginning, found him
standing like a forlorn disconsolate giant in the middle of the
room, gazing about him. "Oh, Lord," he exclaimed, as he shook hands
with me, "I'm sick at my stomach with fright." I spoke some words of
encouragement to him, and was going away, but he held my hand, like
a scared child, crying, "Oh, don't leave me!" "But," said I,
"Thackeray, you mustn't stand here. Your audience are beginning to
come in," and I drew him from the middle of his chairs and benches,
which were beginning to be occupied, into the retiring-room
adjoining the lecture-room, my own readings having made me perfectly
familiar with both. Here he began pacing up and down, literally
wringing his hands in nervous distress. "Now," said I, "what shall
I do? Shall I stay with you till you begin, or shall I go, and leave
you alone to collect yourself?" "Oh," he said, "if I could only get
at that confounded thing" (his lecture), "to have a last look at
it!" "Where is it?" said I. "Oh, in the next room on the
reading-desk." "Well," said I, "if you don't like to go in and get
it, I'll fetch it for you." And remembering well the position of my
reading-table, which had been close to the door of the
retiring-room, I darted in, hoping to snatch the manuscript without
attracting the attention of the audience, with which the room was
already nearly full. I had been used to deliver my reading seated,
at a very low table, but my friend Thackeray gave his lectures
standing, and had had a reading-desk placed on the platform, adapted
to his own very tall stature, so that when I came to get his
manuscript it was almost above my head. Though rather disconcerted,
I was determined not to go back without it, and so made a half jump,