Indeed, through the intercourse of private life he was very amiable. The same suavity of speech, courteous attentions, and general good-nature, he had when a boy, continued and improved: good qualities the more to be prized, as the less probable, from his bold and eager temper, from the turbulence of his wishes, and the hurry of his pursuits.
Jekyl had in part, when a boy, the same happy qualities which afterwards distinguished him so entirely: in his economy of time, in his arts of arranging life, and distributing it exactly, between what was pleasant and what was grave.
With vigorous powers and fair pursuits, the doing one thing at a time is the mode to do every thing. Had Jekyl no other excellence than this, I could not be surprised when he became attorney-general.
"When you got into the place of your ancestor, Sir Joseph," said the tutor of Jekyl to him, "let this be your motto:
Et properare loco, et Cesare."
"Jekyl," said Mrs. Hobart one day, struck with the same address and exactness, "do you know, if you were a painter, Poussin would be nothing to you in the balance of a scene."
Several of his English exercises, and his verses, will not easily be forgotten. And it will be remembered also, in a laughable way, that he was as mischievous as a gentleman need be; the mobbing a vulgar, the hoaxing a quiz, all the dialect of the Thames below Chelsea-reach, and the whole reach of every thing, pleasant but wrong, which the school statutes put out of reach, but what are the practice of the wits, and of every gentleman who would live by the statutes. All these were among Jekyl's early peculiarities, and raised his fame very high for spirit and cleverness.
"So sweet and voluble was his discourse."
He was very popular among all the boys of his time. And he had a knack yet more gratifying, of recommending himself to the sisters and cousins of the boys he visited.
And he well held up in theory what he afterwards exemplified in fact. For in one of the best themes of the time on this subject,