I should be incapable
for the last four hours of laughing at Lord Holland's jokes, eating
Raffaelle's cakes, or repelling Mr. Allen's[163] attack upon the
Church."
Yet, in spite of these limitations, he took lessons on the piano, and often
warbled in the domestic circle. In 1843 he writes--"I am learning to sing
some of Moore's songs, which I think I shall do to great perfection," His
daughter says, with filial piety, that, when he had once learnt a song, he
sang it very correctly, and, "having a really fine voice, often _encored
himself_." A lady who visited him at Combe Florey corroborates this
account, saying that after dinner he said to his wife, "I crave for Music,
Mrs. Smith. Music! Music!" and sang, "with his rich sweet voice, _A Few Gay
Soarings Yet_." In old age he said;--
"If I were to begin life again, I would devote much time to music. All
musical people seem to me happy; it is the most engrossing pursuit;
almost the only innocent and unpunished passion."
When we turn from the aesthetic to the literary faculty, we find it a good
deal better developed. That he was a sound scholar in the sense of being
able to read the standard classics with facility and enjoyment we know from
his own statements. In the early days of the _Edinburgh Review_ he
perceived and extolled the fine scholarship of Monk[164] and Blomfield[165]
and Maltby.
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