"'For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.'"
While he was President, the writer was once sitting in the drawing-room of a highbred lady in Boston. A hat not very new glanced under the window sill. The owner rung at the door; and not finding the gentleman at home, continued his walk. A servant entered and presented the card of John Quincy Adams. "I do wonder," exclaimed the lady, "that the President of the United States will go about in such a manner!"
His apparel was always plain, scrupulously neat, and reasonably well worn. It was made for the comfort of the wearer, who asked not of the fashions.
When he retired from the Presidency, he resolved to pass the remainder of his days under the paternal roof and the beloved shades. He anticipated and desired nothing but quiet, animated by the excitements of intellectual and rural occupations. He had before him the congenial task, to which he had long aspired, of dispensing the treasures of wisdom contained in the unwritten life and unpublished writings of his father. He was ready to impart of his own inexhaustible wealth of experience, observation and erudition, to any one capable of receiving. It takes much to reconcile a thoughtful mind to the loss of what would have been gained by the proposed employment of his leisure. And we had much.
Had the record of his public life, ample and honorable as it was, been now closed, those pages on which patriots, philanthropists and poets will for ever dwell with gratitude and delight, would have been wanting. Hitherto he had done remarkably well what many others, with a knowledge of precedents and of routine and with habits of industry, might have done, if not as well, yet acceptably. He was now called to do what no other man in the Republic had strength and heart to attempt.
He was endowed with a memory uncommonly retentive. He could remember and quote with precision, works which he had not looked at for forty years. Add to this his untiring diligence and perseverance, and the advantages of his position and employment at various capitals in the old world, and the story of his vast acquisitions is told. His love lay in history, literature, moral philosophy and public law. With the Greek, Latin, French, German, and Italian languages and principal writers he was familiar. His favorite English poet was Shakspeare, whom he commented upon and recited with discrimination and force, surpassing, it is said, in justness of conception, the great personators of his principal characters. Among the classics, he especially loved Ovid, unquestionably the Shakspeare of the Romans. Cicero was greatly beloved, and most diligently studied, translated, and commented upon. For many of his latter years he never read continuously. He would fall asleep over his book. But to elucidate any subject he had in hand, he wielded his library with wakefulness and execution lively enough.
He was fond of art in all its departments, but most in the pictorial. In his "Residence at the Court of London," Mr. Rush has drawn an attractive sketch of him at home.
"His tastes were all refined. Literature and art were familiar and dear to him. At his hospitable board I have listened to disquisitions from his lips, on poetry, especially the dramas of Shakspeare, music, painting and sculpture, of rare excellence and untiring interest. A critical scholar in the dead languages, in French, German and Italian, he could draw at will from the wealth of these tongues to illustrate any particular topic. There was no fine painting or statue, of which he did not know the details and the history. There was not even an opera, or a celebrated composer, of which or of whom he could not point out the distinguishing merits and the chief compositions. Yet he was a hard-working and assiduous man of business; and a more regular, punctual, and comprehensive diplomatic correspondence than his, no country can probably boast."
Mr. Adams was generally regarded as cold and austere. The testimony of persons who enjoyed an intimacy with him is the reverse of this. Mr. Rush says that "under an exterior of at times repulsive coldness, dwelt a heart as warm, sympathies as quick, and affections as overflowing as ever animated any bosom." And Mr. Everett, that "in real kindness and tenderness of feeling, no man surpassed him." There is an abundance of like evidence on this head.
He was taciturn rather than talkative, preferring to think and to muse. At times his nature craved converse, and delighted in the play of familiar chat. Occasionally he threw out a lure to debate. If great principles were seriously called in question, he would pour out a rapid and uninterrupted torrent.