The
delicate, the abstinent, the reticent graces were his in the heroic
degree. Where shall I find a pen fastidious enough to define and limit
and enforce so many significant negatives? Words seem to offend by too
much assertion, and to check the suggestions of his reserve. That
reserve was life-long. Loving literature, he never lifted a pen except
to write a letter. He was not inarticulate, he was only silent. He had
an exquisite style from which to refrain. The things he abstained from
were all exquisite. They were brought from far to undergo his judgment,
if haply he might have selected them. Things ignoble never approached
near enough for his refusal; they had not with him so much as that
negative connexion. If I had to equip an author I should ask no better
than to arm him and invest him with precisely the riches that were
renounced by the man whose intellect, by integrity, had become a presence-
chamber.
It was by holding session among so many implicit safeguards that he
taught, rather than by precepts. Few were these in his speech, but his
personality made laws for me. It was a subtle education, for it
persuaded insensibly to a conception of my own. How, if he would not
define, could I know what things were and what were not worthy of his
gentle and implacable judgment? I must needs judge them for myself, yet
he constrained me in the judging.
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