distinguish voices, or learn a language, so far as to be understood when
he talks it, had not necessarily an ear for music, in other words, an
ear for sounds and for the rhythm of speech; but he was deficient in the
organ of tune, phrenologically speaking, though I have heard him
warble a Scotch air on the flute with uncommon sweetness--and
feebleness--without _tonguing_, and play two or three other tunes, which
had been adapted in the choir of his church, upon glass goblets, partly
filled with water and set upon a table before him, as if he enjoyed
every touch and thrill,--his long, thin fingers travelling over the damp
edges of the glass, and bringing forth "Bonnie Doon," or "There's
nothing true but Heaven,"--with his cuffs rolled up as if he were
driving a lathe, and turning off some of the little thin boxes and other
exquisite toys, in wood or ivory, which he was addicted to, about
fifteen years ago, in what he called his workshop. Like Johnson,
however, and Alexander Pope, who, according to Leigh Hunt,

"Spoiled the ears of the town
With his cuckoo-song verses, two up and two down,"

he must have had "time" large; for the music of his rhythm was
absolutely faultless,--cloying indeed, so that he introduced the double
rhymes to roughen it, just as he indulged in alliteration, where the
"lordly lion leaves his lonely lair," that he might not be supposed
incapable of running off upon another track, or into another channel.

But I never heard him sing or try to sing, though he had a deep, manly
voice, read as very few are able to read, and his modulation was rich
and varied, and very agreeable, both to the understanding and the ear.

His pronunciation was a marvel for correctness. In all our intercourse I