He could be logical with a vengeance,--so logical as to cause infinite trouble to his wife, who, with all her good sense, was not logical.

And he had Greek at his fingers' ends,--as his daughter knew very well.

And even to this day he would sometimes recite to them English poetry, lines after lines, stanzas upon stanzas, in a sweet low melancholy voice, on long winter evenings when occasionally the burden of his troubles would be lighter to him than was usual.
Books in Latin and in French he read with as much ease as in English, and took delight in such as came to him, when he would condescend to accept such loans from the deanery.

And there was at times a lightness of heart about the man.

In the course of the last winter he had translated into Greek irregular verse the very noble ballad of Lord Bateman, maintaining the rhythm and the rhyme, and had repeated it with uncouth glee till his daughter knew it all by heart.