ced no change in these
habits; he rose to enter the chamber where he lived alone with his
books, and at night his lamp was ever lit within the same walls.
Nothing, indeed, was more remarkable than the isolation of this
prolonged existence; and it could only be accounted for by the united
influence of three causes: his birth, which brought him no relations or
family acquaintance; the bent of his disposition; and the circumstance
of his inheriting an independent fortune, which rendered unnecessary
those exertions that would have broken up his self-reliance. He disliked
business, and he never required relaxation; he was absorbed in his
pursuits. In London his only amusement was to ramble among booksellers;
if he entered a club, it was only to go into the library. In the
country, he scarcely ever left his room but to saunter in abstraction
upon a terrace; muse over a chapter, or coin a sentence. He had not a
single passion or prejudice: all his convictions were the result of his
own studies, and were often opposed to the impressions which he had
early imbibed. He not only never entered into the politics of the day,
but he could never understand them. He never was connected with any
particular body or set of men; comrades of school or college, or
confederates in that public life which, in England, is, perhaps, the
only foundation of real friendship. In the consideration of a question,
his mind was quite undisturbed by traditionary preconceptions; and it
was this exemption from passion and prejudice which, although his
intelligence was naturally somewhat too ingenious and fanciful for the
conduct of close argument, enabled him, in investigation, often to show
many of the highest attributes of the judicial mind, and particularly to
sum up evidence with singular happiness and ability.

Although in private life he was of a timid nature, his moral courage as
a writer was unimpeachable. Most certainly, throughout his long career,
he never wrote a sentence which he did not believe was true. He will
generally be found to be the advocate of the discomfited and the
oppressed. So his conclusions are often opposed to popular impressions.
This was from no love of paradox, to which he was quite superior; but
because in the conduct of his researches, he too often found that the
unfortunate are calumniated. His vindication of King James the First, he
has himself described as "an affair of literary conscience:" his greater
work on the Life a