dulness of sight. On hearing it said, in praise of a musical
performance, that it was in any case difficult, his feeling comment was,
"I wish it had been impossible!"

The queer convulsions by which he amazed all beholders were probably
connected with his disease, though he and Reynolds ascribed them simply
to habit. When entering a doorway with his blind companion, Miss
Williams, he would suddenly desert her on the step in order to "whirl
and twist about" in strange gesticulations. The performance partook of
the nature of a superstitious ceremonial. He would stop in a street or
the middle of a room to go through it correctly. Once he collected a
laughing mob in Twickenham meadows by his antics; his hands imitating
the motions of a jockey riding at full speed and his feet twisting in
and out to make heels and toes touch alternately. He presently sat down
and took out a _Grotius De Veritate_, over which he "seesawed" so
violently that the mob ran back to see what was the matter. Once in such
a fit he suddenly twisted off the shoe of a lady who sat by him.
Sometimes he seemed to be obeying some hidden impulse, which commanded
him to touch every post in a street or tread on the centre of every
paving-stone, and would return if his task had not been accurately
performed.

In spite of such oddities, he was not only possessed of physical power
corresponding to his great height and massive stature, but was something
of a proficient at athletic exercises. He was conversant with the
theory, at least, of boxing; a knowledge probably acquired from an uncle
who kept the ring at Smithfield for a year, and was never beaten in
boxing or wrestling. His constitutional fearlessness would have made him
a formidable antagonist. Hawkins describes the oak staff, six feet in
length and increasing from one to three inches in diameter, which lay