a child
to reject a thing it abhorred. His unworldliness had not a flaw. So
beautiful a life can never have become distinguished in the struggles
and antagonisms which make the career of the man of the world, or even
the man of letters, as letters are now written; for he was a man, and
the only one I ever knew, of whom one would say that he applied in the
divine sense the maxim of Christ, "Resist not evil,"--he simply, and
by the necessity of his own nature, ignored it.

He had a curious facility in drawing heads of quaint and always varied
character, which character he could not foresee when he began the
drawing. They were always in profile, and he began at one extremity
and ran his pencil round to the other, always bringing out an
individuality, but without any intention as to what that should be;
and he named it, when it was done, according to the type it offered,
generally in character, with a trace of caricature, and, for the most
part, subjects from the courts of law,--a judge or a puzzled juror, a
disappointed or a triumphant client, etc., etc. He would draw a dozen
or twenty in an evening, all different and all unforeseen, as much to
him as to us, and he was as much amused as we were when it turned out
more than usually funny. His chief amusement was hunting through the
bookstalls along the quays, and I have, amongst my old books, an early
life of Raphael, which he gave me, with his name on the fly leaf.

Of Miss Browning, who still lives, I will not speak; but what she told
me of the poet's mother may, I think, be told without indiscretion.
She had the extraordinary power over animals of which we hear
sometimes, but of which I have never known a case so perfect as hers.
She would lure the butterflies in the garden to her, and the domestic
animals obeyed her as if they reasoned. Robert had been given a
pure-blooded bulldog of a rare breed, which tolerated no interference
from any person except him or his mother, and which would allow no
familiarity with her on the part of strangers; so that when a neighbor
came in he was not permitted to shake hands with her, for the dog at
once showed his teeth. Not even her husband was allowed to take the
slightest liberty with her in the dog's presence, and when Robert was
more familiar with her than the dog thought proper he showed his teeth
to him. They one day put him to a severe test, Robert putting his arm
around his mother's neck as they sat side by side at the table.