pened only to his few
intimate friends. It was not merely that he, as Tennyson said of
Edmund Lushington, "bore all that weight of learning lightly, like a
flower." No one could have known in general society that he had any
weight of learning to bear. He seemed to be merely a cultivated and
agreeable man of the world, interested in letters and politics, but
disposed rather to listen than to talk. He was sometimes enigmatic
and "not incapable of casting a pearl of irony in the way of those
who would mistake it for pebbly fact."[61] A great capacity for
cynicism remained a capacity only, because joined to a greater
reverence for virtue. In a large company he seldom put forth the
fulness of his powers; it was in familiar converse with persons whose
tastes resembled his own that the extraordinary finesse and polish
of his mind revealed themselves. His critical taste was not only
delicate, but exacting; his judgments leaned to the side of severity.
No one applied a more stringent moral standard to the conduct of men
in public affairs, whether to-day or in past ages. He insisted upon
this, in his inaugural lecture at Cambridge, as the historian's first
duty. "It is," said he, "the office of historical science to maintain
morality as the sole impartial criterion of men and things." When he
came to estimate the value of literary work he seemed no less hard
to satisfy. His ideal, both as respected thoroughness in substance and
finish in form, was impossibly high, and he noted every failure to
reach it. No one appreciated merit more cordially. No one spoke
with warmer admiration of such distinguished historians and
theologians as the men whom I have just named. But the precision of
his thinking and the fastidiousness of his taste gave more than a
tinge of austerity to his judgment. His opinions were peculiarly
instructive and illuminative to Englishmen, because he was only
half an Englishman in blood, less than half an Englishman in his
training and mental habits. He was as much at home in Paris or Berlin
or Rome as he was in London, speaking the four great languages with
almost equal facility, and knowing the men who in each of these
capitals were best worth knowing. He viewed our insular literature
and politics with the detachment not only of a Roman Catholic
among Protestants, of a pupil of Doellinger and Roscher among Oxford
and Cambridge men, but also of a citizen of the world, whose mastery
of history and philosophy had giv