It was the fashion at one time to classify K. along with Dr. S., of a neighboring city, a gentleman with whom he had few mental traits in common, outside of the gift of eloquence. S. was the inimitable to his parishioners; and he had, like Bobadil, "most un—in one breath—utterable skill, sir!" The matter of his sermons could have been turned without alteration into blank verse, having cadences manifold. He spoke rapidly and moved alternately from side to side in lieu of gesticulation; he studied no opportunity, but lavished his fine things, like an almoner at a coronation, here and there and everywhere.
K., never a user of notes, and no less spontaneous than his famous reputed rival, was habitually careful of detail. His imagination was gorgeous. His activity ran to the verge of restlessness. Thoroughly earnest and exhilarating, his large intelligence was cheery as a breeze from the mountain-top.
Neither can we forget Brentford's Titanic visitor, magnificently verbose, looming at his extraordinary height, with a fund of simplicity and gentleness hidden somewhere beneath that generous exterior. How guileless he was, how tender!—"invaluable at a tragedy." The petition which Mr. Thomas Prince delivered in the Old South would have fallen with equal grace from N.'s lips:—
"O Lord! we would not advise;
But if, in Thy Providence,
A tempest should arise
And drive the French fleet hence,
And scatter it far and wide,
And sink it in the sea,
We should be satisfied,
And Thine the glory be!"
With what fervor, two parts patriotism, one part innocence, would N. have pronounced that mischievous supplication!
His conscientiousness carried him once a little too far; and the sequel "dimmed these spectacles," as Thackeray used to say. It was to us the funniest thing that ever happened in sacred precincts,—funny beyond all power of endurance.
"When Solomon finished the Temple," said the Reverend N., in his sonorous tones,—"when Solomon finished the Temple he sacrificed one hundred and twenty thousand sheep and twenty-two thousand oxen." Now, that was incontestable. But immediately a wretched little doubt crept in upon his Biblical assertion. "Seventy thousand—ur—ur—twenty thousand sheep," continued the Reverend N., "twenty hundred thousand ox—ahem! I mean two hundred thousand, a hundred and twenty—ur—[very slow and deliberate reiteration]: two and twenty thousand oxen, one hundred and twenty thousand sheep." When the last sheep came on the scene we were suffering from agonies of laughter. Let us trust that they turned their meek and startled eyes another way.
There was H., too, a white-haired logician who had proved everything, from the Creation down to the principles of good and evil in the most neglected "queer small boy;" E., drawing exquisite homely illustrations from the sea; and gracious little B., the polished rhetorician, most deferent in his manners of address, most scrupulously reliant on the sense and rectitude of those around him.
"Honor and reverence and good repute" be with them all now, wheresoever they may labor or rest. We think sometimes we have heard Cyril and Polycarp among them.
Our incurable tendency towards observation—the fact of our having been born in an Observatory, so to speak—stands as apology for touching on the heaven-appointed mannerisms of Brentford Polycarps and Cyrils.