Poe
A mysterious sphinx who makes one tremble with lynx-like eyes, the goldsmith of magical wonders.
Dickens
At once a mystic and a sad clown. The Saint Vincent de Paul of the loosened string, the Saint Francis of Assisi of the London Streets. Everything is gesticulation, and the gesticulations are ambiguous. When we think he is going to weep, he laughs; when we think he is going to laugh, he cries. A remarkable genius who does everything he can to make himself appear puny, yet who is, beyond doubt, very great.
Sainte Beuve
Sainte Beuve writes as if he had always said the last word, as if he were precisely at the needle of the scales. Yet I feel that this writer is not as infallible as he thinks. His interest lies in his anecdote, in his malevolent insinuation, in his bawdry. Beyond these, he has the same Mediterranean features as the rest of us.
Ruskin
He impresses me as the Prince of Upstarts, grandiloquent and at the same time unctuous, a General in a Salvation Army of Art, or a monk who is a devotee of an esthetic Doctrine which has been drawn up by a Congress of Tourists.
A Word from Kuroki, the Japanese
"Gentlemen," said General Kuroki, speaking at a banquet tendered to him in New York, "I cannot aspire to the applause of the world, because I have created nothing, I have invented nothing. I am only a soldier."
If these are not his identical words, they convey the meaning of them.
