I have listened attentively to every remark in disparagement of Faraday's character, but the only serious ones have appeared to me to arise from a misunderstanding of the man, a misunderstanding the more easy because his standard of right and wrong, and of his own duty, often differed from the notions current around him. Still, it may be true that his extreme sensitiveness led him sometimes to do scant justice to those who, he imagined, were treading too closely in his own footsteps; as, for instance, when Nobili brought out some beautiful experiments on magnetism, just after the short notice of his own discoveries in 1831 which Faraday had sent to M. Hachette, and which was communicated to the Académie des Sciences. It is true also that, with his great caution and his repugnance to moral evil, he was more disposed to turn away in disgust from an erring companion than to endeavour to reclaim him. It has also been imputed to him as a fault that he founded no school, and took no young man by the hand as Davy had taken him. That this was rather his misfortune than his fault, would appear from words he once wrote to Miss Moore: "I have often endeavoured to discover a genius, but have not been very successful, though many cases seemed promising at first." The world would doubtless have been the gainer if he had stamped his own image on the minds of a group of disciples: but a man cannot do everything; and had Faraday been more of a teacher, he would perhaps have been less of an investigator.
Of course Faraday was subject, like other men, to errors of judgment, and it was impossible, even if desirable, always to avoid giving offence. Thus he was constantly pestered for his autograph; and instead of throwing the applications into his waste-paper basket, he had a formal circular lithographed excusing himself from complying. This offended more than one recipient; and he was roughly made aware of it by once having the circular returned from St. Louis with a scurrilous comment, and the postage from America not prepaid. He never again used the printed form, Miss Barnard undertaking to answer all such requests.
It has been previously remarked that Faraday took little part in social movements, and went little into society, but it must not be supposed that he was by any means unsocial. It seems probable that his freedom in this matter was somewhat hampered by the principles in which he had been brought up: it is certain that he was restrained by the desire to give all the time and energy he could to scientific research. Yet pleasant stories are told of his occasional appearances at social gatherings. Thus he liked to attend the Royal Academy dinners, and in earlier days he enjoyed the artistic and musical conversaziones at Hullmandel's, where Stanfield Turner and Landseer met Garcia and Malibran; and sometimes he joined this pleasant company at supper and charades, at others in their excursions up the river in an eight-oared cutter. Captain Close has described to me how, when the French Lighthouse authorities put up the screw-pile light on the sands near Calais, they invited the Trinity House officers and Faraday to inspect it. A dinner was arranged for them after the inspection, and M. Reynaud proposed the health of the étranger célèbre. A young engineer took exception to Faraday being called a stranger—since he had been at St. Cyr he had known the great Englishman well by his works. The Professor replied to the compliment in the language of his hosts, with a few of his happy and kindly remarks. A gentleman high in the diplomatic service, who was present, remarked that Faraday had said many things which were not French, but not a word which ought not to be so.
More unrestricted was Faraday's sympathy with Nature. He felt the poetry of the changing seasons, but there were two aspects of Nature that especially seemed to claim communion with his spirit: he delighted in a thunderstorm, and he experienced a pleasurable sadness as the orange sunset faded into the evening twilight. There are other minds to which both these sensations are familiar, but they seem to have been felt with great intensity by him. No doubt his electrical knowledge added much to his interest in the grand discharges from the thunder-clouds, but it will hardly account for his standing long at a window watching the vivid flashes, a stranger to fear, with his mind full of lofty thoughts, or perhaps of high communings. Sometimes, too, if the storm was at a little distance, he would summon a cab, and, in spite of the pelting rain, drive to the scene of awful beauty.
On a clear starry night Captain Close quoted to him the words of Lorenzo in the "Merchant of Venice:"—
... "Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,