r brusqueness and violence; for he was, in some measure, of that (p. 080)
class of men who appear to be excited when they are only interested. The
result was that at first he was apt to repel rather than attract. Without
referring to other evidence, we need here only to quote the guarded
statement of one of his warmest friends in describing the beginning of
their acquaintance. "I remember," says Bryant, "being somewhat startled,
coming, as I did, from the seclusion of a country life, with a certain
emphatic frankness in his manner which, however, I came at last to like
and to admire." But besides this he had other characteristics which, to
the majority of men, could not be agreeable. Thoroughly grounded in his
own convictions, positive and uncompromising in the expression of them,
he had no patience with those--and the number is far from being a small
one--who embrace their views loosely, hold them halfheartedly, or defend
them ignorantly. The opinions of such he was not content, like most men of
ability, with quietly and unobtrusively despising. The contempt he felt he
did not pay sufficient deference to human nature to hide. It was inevitable
that the self-love of many should be offended by the arbitrariness and
imperiousness with which he overrode their opinions, and still more by
the unequivocal disdain manifested for them. It must be conceded, also,
that to those for whom he felt indifference or dislike, he had in no
slight degree that capacity of making himself disagreeable which
reaches, and then only in rare instances, the ripened perfection of
offensiveness in him who has breathed from earliest youth the social air
of England. These were traits that were sure to make him enemies in
private life. In public life, moreover, the ardor of his temperament was
such as to hurry him into controversy; and the number of those (p. 081)
hostile to him on personal grounds, was always liable to receive
accessions from men who had never seen him face to face. No gage of
battle could be thrown down which he did not stand ready to take up.
Opposition only inflamed him; it never daunted him. He had not the
slightest particle of that prudence which teaches a man to keep out of
contests in which he can gain no advantage, or in which success will be
only a little less disastrous than defeat. It hardly needs to be said
that a politic line of conduct is usually the very last which a person
of such a temperament follows. But when to a