uotation, "cast four
anchors out of the stern and wish for day."

The first passport to his friendship was entire sincerity. Whatever
other claims might be advanced, he would shut out from any approach to
intimacy those whom he found to be untruthful or not straightforward.
Naturally he did not offer any unnecessary encouragement to bores and
dullards, but in his intercourse with these undesirables and wasters
of his time he adopted none of the "offensive-defensive" methods
of, say, Dr. Johnson or Lord Westbury. He armed himself with a cold
correctitude of politeness, and lowered the social temperature instead
of raising it.

XVII

IN THE FAMILY CIRCLE

His acquaintance and friendship were eagerly sought, and to those who
entered the circle he gave abundantly of his brilliant gifts and of
friendly affection; but the inmost circle was small--the men who were
comrades and brothers; the sister and the brother united with him in
love and trust; the wife to win whom he served so long, and without
whose sustaining help and comradeship his quick spirit and nervous
temperament could hardly have endured the long and often embittered
struggle.

In this inmost circle he was at once strong and tender. The friend who
most cordially admired his intellectual vigour and unflinching honesty
could write after his death that--

what now dwells most in my mind is the memory of old kindness,
and of the days when I used to see him with (his wife) and his
children. I may safely say that I never came from your
house without thinking how good he is; what a tender and
affectionate nature the man has. It did me good simply to see
him.

Always the home was the inmost centre of his own life. Here he found
personal solace in his long struggle; the sympathy that was the pillar
and stay of his genius, the twin incentive to labour and achievement,
the warmth that gave a fuller value to the light he ensued. None knew
more perfectly than himself what he owed to his life-long companion,
who, in turn, was as much uplifted by his eager spirit as she was
proud to be the cherisher of big aspirations and the active minister
to his attainment. To her critical ear he gave the first reading of
his essays; the judgment and the praise that he most valued were hers,
and, as he put it towards the end of his life, when he was travelling
with his son in Madeira and had been cut off from letters longer than
he liked:--