suffrage and coincidence of others. The ablest suggestions had no
conclusive weight with him, till he had abstracted the opinion from
its author, till he had reduced it into a part of his own mind. The
thoughts of others were always acceptable, as affording him at least
a chance of adding to his materials for reflection; but they never
directed his judgment, much less superseded it. He even made a point
of guarding against additional confidence in the suggestions of his
own mind, from finding that a person of talents had formed the same
conviction; unless the person, at the same time, furnished some new
argument, or had arrived at the same conclusion by a different road.
On the latter circumstance he set an especial value, and, I may
almost say, courted the company and conversation of those whose
pursuits had least resembled his own, if he thought them men of clear
and comprehensive faculties. During the period of our intimacy,
scarcely a week passed in which he did not desire me to think on some
particular subject, and to give him the result in writing. Most
frequently, by the time I had fulfilled his request he would have
written down his own thoughts; and then, with the true simplicity of
a great mind, as free from ostentation as it was above jealousy, he
would collate the two papers in my presence, and never expressed more
pleasure than in the few instances in which I had happened to light
on all the arguments and points of view which had occurred to
himself, with some additional reasons which had escaped him. A
single new argument delighted him more than the most perfect
coincidence, unless, as before stated, the train of thought had been
very different from his own, and yet just and logical. He had one
quality of mind, which I have heard attributed to the late Mr. Fox,
that of deriving a keen pleasure from clear and powerful reasoning
for its own sake--a quality in the intellect which is nearly
connected with veracity and a love of justice in the moral character.