His work, for which at last he came to crave with an almost morbid appetite, was a solace and not a cure; the dragon of his dissatisfaction devoured with dark relish that ever-growing tribute of laborious days and nights; but it was hungry still.

The causes of his melancholy were hidden, mysterious, unanalysable perhaps--too deeply rooted in the innermost recesses of his temperament for the eye of reason to apprehend.

There were contradictions in his nature, which, to some of those who knew him best, made him seem an inexplicable enigma: he was severe and gentle; he was modest and scornful; he longed for affection and he was cold.

He was lonely, not merely with the loneliness of exile but with the loneliness of conscious and unrecognised superiority.

He had the pride, at once resigned and overweening, of a doctrinaire.