As his frame, so was his genius. It was as fit for thought as could be,
and equally as unfit for action; and this rendered him melancholy,
apprehensive, humorous, and willing to make the best of everything as it
was, both from tenderness of heart and abhorrence of alteration. His
understanding was too great to admit an absurdity; his frame was not
strong enough to deliver it from a fear. His sensibility to strong
contrasts was the foundation of his humor, which was that of a wit at once
melancholy and willing to be pleased.... His puns were admirable, and
often contained as deep things as the wisdom of some who have greater
names; such a man, for instance, as Nicole, the Frenchman, who was a baby
to him. Lamb would have cracked a score of jokes at Nicole, worth his
whole book of sentences; pelted his head with pearls. Nicole would not
have understood him, but Rochefou-cault would, and Pascal too; and some of
our old Englishmen would have understood him still better. He would have
been worthy of hearing Shakespeare read one of his scenes to him, hot from
the brain. Commonplace found a great comforter in him, as long as it was
good-natured; it was to the ill-natured or the dictatorial only that he
was startling. Willing to see society go on as it did, because he
despaired of seeing it otherwise, but not at all agreeing in his interior
with the common notions of crime and punishment, he "_dumfounded_" a long
tirade against vice one evening, by taking the pipe out of his mouth, and
asking the speaker, "Whether he meant to say that a thief was not a good
man?" To a person abusing Voltaire, and indiscreetly opposing his
character to that of Jesus Christ, he said admirably well (though he by no
means overrated Voltaire, nor wanted reverence in the other quarter), that
"Voltaire was a very good Jesus Christ _for the French_." He liked to see
the church-goers continue to go to church, and wrote a tale in his
sister's admirable little book (_Mrs. Leicester's School_) to encourage
the rising generation to do so; but to a conscientious deist he had
nothing to object; and if an atheist had found every other door shut