Combined with the poetic fancy was a character of high moral tone, a disposition, generous, open-hearted, and impetuous, sensitive, and confiding; irresistibly drawn towards the supernatural, yet as prone to humour. That fine purity of feeling which marked his writings, was equally a personal quality. His sense of honour was quick, as his standard was high. Naturally he would have preferred death itself to the slightest shade of dishonour on his name. Faithful to the command implied in the inspired delineation of the upright man, it might be taken for the description of his own course,—"he that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not." Incapable himself of mean or sordid action, he never anticipated it in others; unselfish to a degree, he perhaps calculated too much on the same generosity of feeling in the world. The editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, in a notice, which appeared in October 1850, alludes to "his well-known liberality to literary men," a reference amply confirmed by other incidental testimony; but though literary acquaintances were often the topic of home conversation, he never spoke of any kindness it had been in his power to show them. It was the highest luxury he knew, thus to mitigate the perplexities or wants of others, but it was only by accident that his family would discover it. Even when he dropped money into a poor man's hand, he would hurry away as if he had done something wrong, and wanted to forget it.
Another phase of the same disposition, was the generous pleasure with which he regarded the gifts or acquirements of others. Most cordially did he recognise talent of any kind, no matter in whom, or under what form it appeared. He was as free from envious or jealous feeling as from common selfishness. This arose from a fine nature,—which embraced as kindred spirits those from whom morbid self-love might have shrunk as rivals—not from an overweening or even just sense of his own superiority: in that he was unusually deficient.
In truth his want of self-valuation, almost of appreciation of his own powers, was very noticeable. He would exercise his talents, as a bird does its power of song, for very pleasure, but without any thought of display. "I know," he would say, "that many others cannot do the things I do, but I do not feel as if I had done anything worth thinking of, it falls so far below the point I wish to reach." His delight in giving pleasure supplied this want of the Phrenologist's Self-esteem, as regarded others, but to himself, the lack of it, joined to his extremely sensitive disposition, was in fact a destitution of defensive armour; hence it was in the power of minds far inferior to his own to torture him. A similar deficiency was the absence of that worldly wisdom, which in combination with a fine and generous disposition, is so valuable to its possessors. The deprivation of it occasioned a transparent simplicity of character, which again left him too often at the mercy of coarse ungenerous natures.
That intense yearning for sympathy, which was noticed as a characteristic of his childhood, followed him through life, and seemed to increase with his years. His many resources, though capable of yielding the purest pleasure, could not fill the void. They concealed the longing from observers, but left the heart often aching. Frank and confiding himself, he looked for the same frankness in others. The slightest reserve chilled and wounded him, and threw him back on himself. "An unkind word or look," he would frequently say, "nay a chilling one, from those I respect and esteem, is misery to me." His happiness was indeed a delicate thing, for though the writer can say she never knew any one made happy with so little effort—the very wish to make him so, evinced, was enough—yet she often felt, and trembled to feel, how intensely miserable it was in the power of any one he loved, to make him.
His natural vivacity concealed another feature of his character from the general eye, which was yet discernible by those who studied him. "Spare me," said he one day to a lady, half jocosely, "I am so shy." "You shy!" she exclaimed, protesting against the possibility of such a thing. He quietly acquiesced, and let it pass. "You would not think that I was naturally shy," said he a few days after to a friend who had been present, with whom he was now engaged in a pleasant little disquisition on psychology, and who, he afterwards allowed, knew more of his real character from a few months' acquaintance than any one had done before. "Yes I should," was her unhesitating reply. "Why, how should you think so!" he exclaimed in astonishment. "Your attitudes and movements betray it. I do not say as Robert Hall did of an acquaintance, that you seem begging pardon of all men for being in existence, but you do often seem begging pardon of your company for being in their presence, when they are only too happy to have your society. You would creep into a nutshell, rather than be where you thought you were not wanted."
Not an uncommon, but a pleasing trait, was that humanity to the animal creation which marked him from boyhood. Not only did he never "heedlessly" set "foot upon a worm," but he would carefully remove it from the path, lest some other foot should crush it. Cruelty of any kind called forth his strongest reprehension.
One great charm of his character, was its perfect retention of the freshness of youth. The most juvenile in the company could not but feel that he was as young in spirit as themselves. His regular and temperate habits of life no doubt contributed to this, as did his love of simple pleasures. He never sought the false excitement of artificial stimulants. His own buoyancy of spirits, and ever-varied pursuits, most of all perhaps the exhilaration of botanical "field sports," were the true stimulants which fed the flame of life, while they made it burn more brightly. Even in those years when the smile or quick repartee often only concealed, but could not remove, the secret care or the unsatisfied craving for some undefined blessing, that preyed within, the change to a new pursuit, or a fresh path for thought and energy, were the only means to which he had recourse "to keep the mind from preying on itself."
To those who knew him best it is easy to trace much of his personal character in his writings. His social disposition, and particularly this freshness of spirit, gave a tone to all he wrote. The high ideal of woman maintained in the "Traditions," has been already noticed: he was quick to perceive fragmentary indications of that ideal, in real life. True to Haydon's motto which he so often quoted, "Ex pede Hercules," one trait of disinterestedness, of self-sacrifice, of intuitive perception of the good, was sufficient, and his imagination therefrom created,
"A perfect woman, nobly plann'd."
A nice observer of the indications of character, he detected, with a quickness approaching to intuition, those little peculiarities of manner and expression which intimate the disposition and habit of thought, and often after a very brief acquaintance, he would by a few touches draw a mental portrait to the life, yet without the slightest approach to caricature, which he would have abhorred as deformity. This habit of close observation and quick perception contributed to the variety and individuality of his delineations. He was remarkably susceptible of impressions, hence he was open to influences which others escape. A very unpleasing expression of countenance would act upon him so strongly, that he would go far out of his way to avoid it. In a similar manner, certain appearances of the clouds in an electrical state of the atmosphere would from childhood impress him painfully, even at times with a sentiment almost akin to horror; and this in spite of a constitution, over which the state of the weather ordinarily had no power; the spirit seemed directly operated on through the eye.