coat and waistcoat striped with buff and blue, like a farmer
in his Sunday best; the heavy ploughman's figure firmly
planted on its burly legs; his face full of sense and
shrewdness, and with a somewhat melancholy air of thought,
and his large dark eye "literally glowing" as he spoke. "I
never saw such another eye in a human head," says Walter
Scott, "though I have seen the most distinguished men of my
time." With men, whether they were lords or omnipotent
critics, his manner was plain, dignified, and free from
bashfulness or affectation. If he made a slip, he had the
social courage to pass on and refrain from explanation. He
was not embarrassed in this society, because he read and
judged the men; he could spy snobbery in a titled lord; and,
as for the critics, he dismissed their system in an epigram.
"These gentlemen," said he, "remind me of some spinsters in
my country who spin their thread so fine that it is neither
fit for weft nor woof." Ladies, on the other hand, surprised
him; he was scarce commander of himself in their society; he
was disqualified by his acquired nature as a Don Juan; and
he, who had been so much at his ease with country lasses,
treated the town dames to an extreme of deference. One lady,
who met him at a ball, gave Chambers a speaking sketch of his
demeanour. "His manner was not prepossessing - scarcely, she
thinks, manly or natural. It seemed as if he affected a
rusticity or LANDERTNESS, so that when he said the music was
`bonnie, bonnie,' it was like the expression of a child."
These would be company manners; and doubtless on a slight
degree of intimacy the affectation would grow less. And his
talk to women had always "a turn either to the pathetic or
humorous, which engaged the attention particularly."