Very fair towards other poets, including those who were not popular, such as Crabbe.
He had the high-bred manners not only of a gentleman but of a great man.
He would have wished that, like Shakespeare, his life might be unknown to posterity.
Conversation.
In the commonest conversation he showed himself a man of genius. He had abundance of fire, never talked poorly, never for effect. As Socrates described Plato, “Like no one whom I ever knew before.”
The three subjects of which he most often spoke were “God,” “Free-Will,” and “Immortality,” yet always seeming to find an (apparent) contradiction between the “imperfect world,” and “the perfect attributes of God.”
Great charm of his ordinary conversation, sitting by a very ordinary person and telling stories with the most high-bred courtesy, endless stories, not too high or too low for ordinary conversation.
The persons and incidents of his childhood very vivid to him, and the Lincolnshire dialect and the ways of life.
Loved telling a good story, which he did admirably, and also hearing one.