like Sterne?”—“Yes, to be sure,” he would say, “I should deserve to be hanged if I didn’t!” His repeating some parts of Comus with his fine, deep, mellow-toned voice, particularly the lines, “I have heard my mother Circe with the Sirens three,” &c., and the enthusiastic comments he made afterwards, were a feast to the ear and to the soul. He read the poetry of Milton with the same fervour and spirit of devotion that I have since heard others read their own. “That is the most delicious feeling of all,” I have heard him explain, “to like what is excellent, no matter whose it is.” In this respect he practised what he preached. He was incapable of harbouring a sinister motive, and judged only from what he felt. There was no flaw or mist in the clear mirror of his mind. He was as open to impressions as he was strenuous in maintaining them. He did not care a rush whether a writer was old or new, in prose or in verse—“What he wanted,” he said, “was something to make him think.” Most men’s minds are to me like musical instruments out of tune. Touch a particular key, and it jars and makes harsh discord with your own. They like Gil Blas, but can see nothing to laugh at in Don Quixote: they adore Richardson, but are disgusted with Fielding. Fawcett had a
