ty which had been so remarkable in
his youth; who was gracious but somewhat reserved and dignified with
strangers; a delightful companion to friends and especially to younger
men; full of literature, especially of poetry, and with a memory that
enabled him to recite long passages from Homer and Virgil; above all,
an ardent lover of music, making a practice, so far as possible, of
hearing some, whether vocal or instrumental, every afternoon. His ears
were eyes to him; and when he heard a lady sing finely he would say:
"Now will I swear this lady is handsome." All kinds of music, and not
only the severer, were delightful to the "organ-voice of England."

That is not the least interesting thing about him. The greatest of
England's Puritans {85} was also the greatest of her artists. He had
nothing in him of the morbid scrupulosity which is such an inhuman
feature in French Jansenism and some of the English sects. His was a
large nature which demanded a free expansion of life. Lonely figure as
he is in our literary history, with no real predecessors or followers,
his mighty arch yet bridges the gulf between Elizabeth and the
Revolution, and is of nearer or less distant kin to Shakspeare than to
Pope. His prose is the swan song of the old eloquence, as inspired and
as confused as an oracle. To read it when it is at its best is to soar
on wings through the empyrean and despise Swift and Addison walking in
neat politeness on the pavement. There as everywhere, in his verse, in
his character, in his mind, in his life, he has the strength and the
weakness of an aristocrat. The youth who in his Cambridge days was
"esteemed a virtuous person yet not to be ignorant of his parts" did
not belie the opinion formed of him in either of those respects. His
Republicanism was of the proud Roman sort, and at least as near
Coriolanus as Gracchus; a boundless faith in the State and a boundless
desire to spend and be spent in its service, a total and scornful
indifference to the opinions of all {86} those, though they might be
five-sixths of the nation, who did not desire to be served in the way
which he had decided to be for their good. The modern way of deciding
matters of State by counting heads may very likely be the best of many
unsatisfactory ways of accomplishing a very difficult business; but it
has always been peculiarly exasperating to men of genius who see their
way plainly and cannot understand why a million blind men are