ngenuity in the rhetoric of the schools.

The manners of Lord Hastings had contributed to his fortunes. Despite
the newness of his honours, even the haughtiest of the ancient nobles
bore him no grudge, for his demeanour was at once modest and manly. He
was peculiarly simple and unostentatious in his habits, and possessed
that nameless charm which makes men popular with the lowly and welcome
to the great. [On Edward's accession so highly were the services of
Hastings appreciated by the party, that not only the king, but many of
the nobility, contributed to render his wealth equal to his new station,
by grants of lands and moneys. Several years afterwards, when he
went with Edward into France, no less than two lords, nine knights,
fifty-eight squires, and twenty gentlemen joined his train.--Dugdale:
Baronage, p. 583. Sharon Turner: History of England, vol. iii. p. 380.]
But in that day a certain mixture of vice was necessary to success; and
Hastings wounded no self-love by the assumption of unfashionable purism.
He was regarded with small favour by the queen, who knew him as the
companion of Edward in his pleasures, and at a later period accused him
of enticing her faithless lord into unworthy affections. And certain it
is, that he was foremost amongst the courtiers in those adventures which
we call the excesses of gayety and folly, though too often leading to
Solomon's wisdom and his sadness. But profligacy with Hastings had the
excuse of ardent passions: he had loved deeply, and unhappily, in his
earlier youth, and he gave in to the dissipation of the time with the
restless eagerness common to strong and active natures when the heart is
not at ease; and under all the light fascination of his converse; or
the dissipation of his life, lurked the melancholic temperament of a man
worthy of nobler things. Nor was the courtly vice of the libertine the
only drawback to the virtuous character assigned to Hastings by Comines.
His experience of men had taught him something of the disdain of the
cynic, and he scrupled not at serving his pleasures or his ambition by
means which his loftier nature could not excuse to his clear sense.
[See Comines, book vi., for a curious anecdote of what Mr. Sharon Turner
happily calls "the moral coquetry" of Hastings,--an anecdote which
reveals much of his character.] Still, however, the world, which
had deteriorated, could not harden him. Few persons so able acted
so frequently from impulse; the im