was alluded to; but I have also felt almost indignant at his
lenient good-nature to that very person, let him once show the
smallest symptom of contrition, or seek, even in the clumsiest way, or
for the most selfish purpose, to disarm his generous antagonist. His
forgiveness in such cases was more exuberant than his wrath had ever
been.

It is inevitable, in describing him, to characterize his life first by
its quantity. He belonged to the true race of the giants of learning;
he took in knowledge at every pore, and his desires were insatiable.
Not, perhaps, precocious in boyhood,--for it is not precocity to begin
Latin at ten and Greek at eleven, to enter the Freshman class at
twenty and the professional school at twenty-three,--he was equalled
by few students in the tremendous rate at which he pursued every
study, when once begun. With strong body and great constitutional
industry, always acquiring and never forgetting, he was doubtless at
the time of his death the most variously learned of living Americans,
as well as one of the most prolific of orators and writers.

Why did Theodore Parker die? He died prematurely worn out through this
enormous activity,--a warning, as well as an example. To all appeals
for moderation, during the latter years of his life, he had but one
answer,--that he had six generations of long-lived farmers behind him,
and had their strength to draw upon. All his physical habits, except
in this respect, were unexceptionable: he was abstemious in diet, but
not ascetic, kept no unwholesome hours, tried no dangerous
experiments, committed no excesses. But there is no man who can
habitually study from twelve to seventeen hours a day (his friend Mr.
Clarke contracts it to "from six to twelve," but I have Mr. Parker's
own statement of the fact) without ultimate self-destruction. Nor was
this the practice during his period of health alone, but it was pushed
to the last moment: he continued in the pulpit long after a withdrawal
was peremptorily prescribed for him; and when forbidden to leave home
for lecturing, during the winter of 1858, he straightway prepared the
most laborious literary works of his life, for delivery as lectures in
the Fraternity Course at Boston.

He worked thus, not from ambition, nor altogether from principle, but
from an immense craving for mental labor, which had become second
nature to him. His great omnivorous, hungry intellect must have
constant food,--new languages, new s