ctory clue has been afforded to those
anomalies, moral and intellectual, which his life exhibited,--still
more, should it have been the effect of my humble labours to clear
away some of those mists that hung round my friend, and show him, in
most respects, as worthy of love as he was, in all, of admiration,
then will the chief and sole aim of this work have been accomplished.

[Footnote 1: It may be making too light of criticism to say with Gray
that "even a bad verse is as good a thing or better than the best
observation that ever was made upon it;" but there are surely few
tasks that appear more thankless and superfluous than that of
following, as Criticism sometimes does, in the rear of victorious
genius (like the commentators on a field of Blenheim or of Waterloo),
and either labouring to point out to us _why_ it has triumphed, or
still more unprofitably contending that it _ought_ to have failed.
The well-known passage of La Bruyere, which even Voltaire's adulatory
application of it to some work of the King of Prussia has not spoiled
for use, puts, perhaps, in its true point of view the very
subordinate rank which Criticism must be content to occupy in the
train of successful Genius:--"Quand une lecture vous eleve l'esprit
et qu'elle vous inspire des sentimens nobles, ne cherehez pas une
autre regle pour juger de l'ouvrage; il est bon et fait de main de
l'ouvrier: La Critique, apres ca, peut s'exercer sur les petites
choses, relever quelques expressions, corriger des phrases, parler de
syntaxe," &c. &c.]

Having devoted to this object so large a portion of my own share of
these pages, and, yet more fairly, enabled the world to form a
judgment for itself, by placing the man, in his own person, and
without disguise, before all eyes, there would seem to remain now but
an easy duty in summing up the various points of his character, and,
out of the features, already separately described, combining one
complete portrait. The task, however, is by no means so easy as it
may appear. There are few characters in which a near acquaintance
does not enable us to discover some one leading principle or passion
consistent enough in its operations to be taken confidently into
account in any estimate of the disposition in which they are found.
Like those points in the human face, or figure, to which all its
other proportions are referable, there is in most minds some one
governing influence, from which chiefly,--though, of course, b