Leigh Hunt said that "he had a head
worthy of Aristotle." Hazlitt calls it "a fine Titian head, full of dumb
eloquence." I knew that, before he had attained the age of twenty years,
he had to make his way in the world, and that his lines had not been cast
in pleasant places. I had heard, indeed, that his family had at one time
consisted of a father and mother and an insane sister; all helpless and
poor, and all huddled together in a small lodging, scarcely large enough
to admit of their moving about without restraint. It is difficult to
imagine a more disheartening youth. Nevertheless, out of this desert, in
which no hope was visible, he rose up eventually a cheerful man (cheerful
when his days were not clouded by his sister's illness); a charming
companion, full of pleasant and gentle fancies, and the finest humorist of
his age.
Although sometimes strange in manner, he was thoroughly unaffected; in
serious matters thoroughly sincere. He was, indeed (as he confesses),
terribly shy; diffident, not awkward in manner; with occasionally nervous,
twitching motions that betrayed this infirmity. He dreaded the criticisms
of servants far more than the observations of their masters.
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