In retirement, his solitude was not relieved by serious application to any branch of knowledge.

Devotion to science and to the advancement of learning, a virtue which has changed the infamy of even baser natures than his into glory, never dignified his seclusion.

He had elegant tastes, he built fine palaces, he collected paintings, and he discoursed of the fine arts with the skill and eloquence of a practised connoisseur; but the nectared fruits of divine philosophy were but harsh and crabbed to him.
His moral characteristics are even more difficult to seize than his intellectual traits.

It is a perplexing task to arrive at the intimate interior structure of a nature which hardly had an interior.

He did not change, but he presented himself daily in different aspects.