Once for all, it is unjust; emphatically untrue as an image of John Sterling: perhaps to few men that lived along with him could such an interpretation of their existence be more inapplicable." Whatever truth there might be in these rather passionate representations, and to myself there wanted not a painful feeling of their truth, it by no means appeared what help or remedy any friend of Sterling's, and especially one so related to the matter as myself, could attempt in the interim.

Perhaps endure in patience till the dust laid itself again, as all dust does if you leave it well alone?
Much obscuration would thus of its own accord fall away; and, in Mr.Hare's narrative itself, apart from his commentary, many features of Sterling's true character would become decipherable to such as sought them.
Censure, blame of this Work of Mr.Hare's was naturally far from my thoughts.

A work which distinguishes itself by human piety and candid intelligence; which, in all details, is careful, lucid, exact; and which offers, as we say, to the observant reader that will interpret facts, many traits of Sterling besides his heterodoxy.

Censure of it, from me especially, is not the thing due; from me a far other thing is due!-- On the whole, my private thought was: First, How happy it comparatively is, for a man of any earnestness of life, to have no Biography written of him; but to return silently, with his small, sorely foiled bit of work, to the Supreme Silences, who alone can judge of it or him; and not to trouble the reviewers, and greater or lesser public, with attempting to judge it! The idea of "fame," as they call it, posthumous or other, does not inspire one with much ecstasy in these points of view .-- Secondly, That Sterling's performance and real or seeming importance in this world was actually not of a kind to demand an express Biography, even according to the world's usages.

His character was not supremely original; neither was his fate in the world wonderful.