As a poet, he possessed fluency and facility, but not the strongest
imagination. As a classic, he was admirable; and his prose themes upon
different subjects displayed an acquaintance with the Latin idiom and
phraseology seldom acquired even by scholastic life, and the practice of
later years. Beyond this, he read much of everything that appeared, knew
every thing, and was acquainted with every better publication of the
times.
Even then he studied law, politics, divinity; and could have written
well upon those subjects.
These talents have served him since more effectually than they did then;
more as man than boy:
For at school he was a kind of Gray Beard: he neither ran, played,
jumped, swam, or fought, as ~86~~ other boys do. The descriptions of
puerile years, so beautifully given by _Gray_, in his ode:
"Who, foremost, now delight to cleave,
With pliant arm, thy glassy wave?
The captive linnet which enthrall?
What idle progeny succeed,
To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?"
All these would have been, and were, as non-descriptive of him as they
would have been of the lord chancellor of England, with a dark brow
and commanding mien, determining a cause of the first interest to this
country. Added to this, in personal appearance he was most unfavored;
and exemplified the Irish definition of an open countenance--a mouth from
ear to ear.
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